


make a mercy out of me

by spiralpegasus



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: (deaths are all antagonist ocs), (dimisylvix as a romantic ot3), (only from the pov of the people who were assaulted - no one else blames them for anything), Aftermath of Torture, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Amputation, Angst with a Happy Ending, Decapitation, Electrocution, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Blue Lions Route, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Blue Lions Route Spoilers, Hallucinations, Hurt/Comfort, Imprisonment, M/M, Minor Character Death, Multi, NO MAJOR CHARACTER DEATH!!! I PROMISE!, Non-Consensual Haircuts, Non-Consensual Touching, Non-Graphic Rape/Non-Con, Polyamory, Rape Aftermath, Sexual Assault, Starvation, Torture, Victim Blaming, Whump, graphic torture of feet/hands, gronder field never happens, last chapter is ALL comfort, more detailed cw list in notes, noncon is perpetrated by an oc and does not involve any of the tagged ships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-05
Updated: 2020-05-31
Packaged: 2021-02-24 22:54:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 38,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22125811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spiralpegasus/pseuds/spiralpegasus
Summary: The Kingdom army has taken the Great Bridge of Myrddin, and the entire continent is holding its breath as all three nations prepare their forces for a clash at Gronder Field. As the Kingdom army regroups at the monastery, a small disturbance sends Felix and Sylvain on a scouting mission to Imperial territory. They do not return.Captured and tortured for information, Felix and Sylvain have little to rely on but each other and the faint hope of rescue.At the monastery, the Blue Lions mount a desperate search for their missing companions. Dimitri, confronted by the potential loss of the two people he cherishes most, must decide what’s more important: their lives, or the demands of his ghosts.
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Felix Hugo Fraldarius, Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Sylvain Jose Gautier, Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Sylvain Jose Gautier, Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Sylvain Jose Gautier
Comments: 115
Kudos: 754





	1. my name like an elegy

**Author's Note:**

> warning: the first chapter is basically all hurt, with a bit of comfort at the end. im have a rescue arc and a recovery arc in the works, but they aren't finished yet and i completely understand if you'd rather skip this fic until those are done! (i have significant chunks of those next parts done, and i hope very much to have them posted soon!) (edit: the whole fic is complete now! if you are like me and cannot read the hurt without the comfort, you are now safe to consume this fic!)
> 
> there IS a happy ending to this chapter, in that sylvain and felix are rescued.
> 
> i did my best to cover everything in the tags, and if you'd like more details about any of the warnings, i've included them in the end notes - they contain spoilers, but i describe in more detail the nature and severity of the content. and if you feel as though i have missed something, PLEASE let me know.
> 
> as a side note, authorial intent is sylvix/dimisylvix having romantic feelings for one another, but it's really not the focus and can be read platonically, so i didn't tag it! (EDIT 5/31: as of chapter 3, dimisylvix is officially romantic!)
> 
> please, please mind the tags on this. it's significantly darker than my usual fare. be safe and take care of yourselves!
> 
> fic and chapter titles are all from curses by the crane wives. also, as a final note, thank u to astra, nano, and ama for helping me so much with this story ;w;

Four scouts.

They aren’t going far from the monastery – just to the barest edge of Imperial territory. There have been reports of Imperial movement on Garreg Mach’s side of the mountains. Could be rumors, could be fact – it’s probably a mix of the two. Four scouts, then; a small, maneuverable group to gather information and report back home. Sending Sylvain and Felix both is a bit of overkill, even, but the Professor doesn’t believe in being too careful.

Four scouts: Sylvain, Felix, and two of their most trusted battalion members, packed and armed lightly for quick and quiet travel. There isn’t a lot of tension as they move towards the Oghma Mountains. None of them expect any real trouble – a skirmish with a few wayward Imperial scouts, perhaps, or a group of bandits seeking more lucrative targets farther away from the mountainside.

Four scouts, and in seconds, it becomes three. Felix’s battalion second-in-command drops to the ground with barely a gasp, an arrow in her eye.

“Shit!” Felix hisses, drawing his sword and ducking towards the sparse tree cover. Sylvain’s eyes flit across the arrow’s fletching, the direction it’s pointing, the faint movement of a bowstring pulled back in the trees above, and he darts behind a tree just as another arrow whistles through the air.

“Where did they come from?” Pavel, Sylvain’s battalion commander, demands as he crouches behind a thick bush. Another arrow thuds into the ground, dangerously close to his hiding place.

“They were expecting us.” Sylvain chances a peek around the tree, but an answering arrow has him jerking back behind his cover. His mind races. Their arrival was anticipated, and their planned route was discerned with enough accuracy to stage an ambush. The information was a decoy, then, but the route – they hadn’t planned the exact route until they were on the road. Felix’s second-in-command’s corpse is cooling on the ground, and—

His eyes flash to the man he’s trusted with his life, with his _battalion’s_ lives. Pavel stares back, and the longer Sylvain watches him, the more his façade of shock and fear melts away.

“Wasn’t too hard to figure out, was it?” Pavel says with an exhale. He slides his sword from its sheath, and Sylvain flicks his eyes to Felix, praying that Felix sees what’s happening and has time to run.

Felix does see what’s happening, but unfortunately for Sylvain, the idiot’s response is to run _towards_ the danger, not away from it. He darts across the gap between their cover, his sword still drawn.

“Felix—” Sylvain starts, because the situation is _bad._ They don’t know the enemy’s numbers, or exactly how many archers have them pinned down right now. They can’t afford to be reckless—

“Coming to your boyfriend’s rescue, huh, kid?” Pavel says wryly, catching Felix’s sword with his own.

“Shut up, traitor!” Felix snarls.

Pavel and Felix are both fully out of cover now, and the archers can’t fire without risking a hit on Pavel. Sylvain surges up to his feet, lance in hand, to lend whatever aid he can.

He and Felix drive Pavel back several steps before reinforcements pour in from the surrounding woods. They fight as long as they can, back-to-back and desperate, but it doesn’t take long for the disadvantage to overwhelm them. Felix is bleeding from countless cuts in his torso, and a gash in the meat of his left thigh is deep enough to have him dragging his leg.

An arrow buries itself under Sylvain’s collarbone, then in the gap of armor behind his knee; he drops to the ground, and when Felix turns, panicked, the butt of an axe collides with the base of his skull and sends him tumbling too.

“Felix—” Sylvain hisses between his teeth, agony flaring from his collarbone and his knee as he struggles to regain his feet. A mace collides with his chest and he crumples with a cry, his ribs splintering under the force of the blow. Through the haze of pain and encroaching unconsciousness, he sees Felix trying to crawl towards him, and he reaches out a trembling hand.

His stomach drops as a lance pierces Felix’s sword arm and pins it to the ground. He isn’t sure if the scream that rings out is his or Felix’s.

“Hey,” he thinks he hears Pavel’s voice say. “We just need them _incapacitated,_ not _crippled.”_

“You saw the little bastard with a sword,” a female voice retorts. “I’m not taking chances.”

Felix is twisting around where his arm is skewered like a pinned butterfly, his face contorted into immeasurable agony. _Stop moving,_ Sylvain wants to say, but all that comes out of his mouth is a trickle of blood when he tries to speak. _You’re only making it worse—_

“Didn’t think they’d be dumb enough to send two heirs,” one of the men muses, planting a boot into Sylvain’s side. “Better for us, I suppose.”

“Fuck you,” Felix wheezes, and Sylvain almost wants to laugh. The urge dies immediately at the sight of a foot connecting with Felix’s face.

“You’re not exactly in a position to insult us,” the woman spits, bringing her foot back down and grinding her heel into Felix’s cheek. Felix lets out a choked moan of pain as his face is shoved into the blood-soaked dirt, and Sylvain thrashes.

“Calm down, sugar,” the man with his boot on Sylvain’s broken ribs coos. “She ain’t gonna kill him. You’re both worth much, much more to us alive than dead.”

“Maybe you could lay off his face a little, though,” a different man puts in. Sylvain and Felix stiffen at the same time. “He’s awful pretty.”

The woman snorts, but she removes her boot from Felix’s face. “Is that all you ever think about?”

“Stop it,” Pavel tells them firmly. “They’re resources. Important ones. Not playthings.”

“No fun,” the man who called Felix pretty mutters.

Someone wrenches Sylvain’s arms behind his back and binds them with a rough rope; he swears he can feel his ribs grinding together as he’s hauled to his feet and half-marched, half-dragged through the woods. When his vision isn’t grayed out from the pain, he seeks out Felix, who isn’t even being allowed the dignity of walking – he’s being dragged by his wrists through the dirt, thrashing and biting at whoever’s hands get too close to his face.

“Heal ‘em up once they’re in the wagon,” Pavel raises his voice to be heard over Felix’s muffled cursing. “They’re no good to us dead.”

“But they’re good to us too weak to fight back,” the woman mutters mutinously. She’s the one holding the rope wrapped around Felix’s wrists, and she gives it a particularly harsh jerk and laughs at Felix’s cry of pain. Sylvain grits his teeth, but he’s so lightheaded that every step almost plunges him into unconsciousness. He’s barely keeping his feet. He can’t help Felix.

He can’t help Felix, and the realization chills him to his core, aching more than all his broken ribs combined. Felix who is leaving a trail of blood as he’s dragged on his back through the dirt; Felix who is snapping at his captors with all the desperation of a cornered animal; Felix whose life matters more to Sylvain than his own does. And Sylvain can’t help Felix.

“Load them up,” Pavel says, and Sylvain watches, helpless, angry, as the woman hauls Felix up by his injured arm and heaves him carelessly into the back of a covered wagon. Sylvain isn’t treated with much more consideration, and the air leaves him in a moment of white-hot agony as his chest collides with the wagon’s wooden floor.

“Seriously?” yet another male voice breathes in exasperation, coming from someplace inside the wagon.

“Make sure they don’t die,” the woman says, slapping the side of the carriage. “They’re the Gautier and Fraldarius heirs.”

“Both of them?” the man in the carriage with them says incredulously. Sylvain flinches as a hand runs through his hair and gives it a tug. “I guess they look the part.”

“Fought the part, too,” the woman says, her voice fading as she presumably loops around to the front of the carriage. “Pavel, make sure they don’t kill Dorset, will you?”

“Will do,” Pavel says, clambering into the wagon somewhere to Sylvain’s left.

A large part of Sylvain wants to lash out. Kick, punch, scream – subject Pavel to even an ounce of the agony Felix is experiencing, kill Pavel just like he had Felix’s second-in-command killed. He’s bound at his wrists, and Dorset is binding his ankles, but his Crest is thrumming just below his skin and he’s sure he could get a good blow or two in before Pavel killed him. He’s sure.

But Felix.

Felix is dazed in a way that speaks of a concussion, and his arm is bleeding freely from the gaping pit the lance was yanked out of. He struggles as Dorset binds his arms and legs, but it grows weaker until it’s little more than a twitch of his limbs. Like he’s half-dead already.

Sylvain cannot follow a course of action that will surely kill him. Not while Felix still breathes.

“Shame they didn’t bring their Relics,” Dorset muses. He touches Felix’s face, hand alight with white magic, and Felix’s lip curls weakly. He’s still conscious, but barely. Sylvain himself is clinging onto his awareness with the tips of his fingers, feeling it slide farther and farther into a hazy gray that laps at the edge of his consciousness with every creak and rock of the moving carriage.

Pavel makes a noncommittal noise. Rage, muted by pain and blood loss, spikes through the back of Sylvain’s skull.

“Guess it would be stupid to bring them on a scouting mission. Still, you could have tried to convince them.” Dorset’s hands are moving down Felix’s body, still aglow with magic. “There. He’s not gonna bleed to death, and his brain ain’t bleeding anymore.”

“Good,” Pavel says. Sylvain is still stuck on Felix’s _brain_ bleeding. If these dumbasses hadn’t thought to have their healer make sure Felix was stable, Felix would have _died._ Right next to Sylvain on the floor of this damned carriage, he would have bled into his skull and died, without Sylvain even realizing the moment Felix was gone.

Dorset’s face, blurry and unfocused, leans over Sylvain. He wheezes out a mean laugh as his hand comes to rest on Sylvain’s chest, and the laugh continues when a groan of pain slips from Sylvain’s lungs. “Turner got you good with that mace, huh?” he says, and the pain begins to—not ease, but shift to something closer than a knot being worked out of a muscle. Sylvain gasps in his first full breath since the weapon crushed his ribs, and Dorset pulls back.

“There. Not dead,” he says, retreating to a far corner of the wagon.

“Your bedside manner is astounding,” Pavel says dryly, which gets a snort from Dorset.

Sylvain hates them. Fiercely, viciously, violently. It would be better in some ways if they were just _evil._ Laughing maniacally, twiddling their moustaches, all the dumb shit the villains do in those books Ashe and Ingrid like to read. But they’re just—they’re just _people._ They’re joking with each other, now. Talking about their day, and what they’re going to eat for dinner tonight. They’re people with thoughts and feelings and lives, and they’re still capable of this kind of betrayal. This kind of cruelty.

His ribs are still deeply bruised, maybe even cracked in some places; he supposes Dorset saw no need to heal him fully. Felix is limp on the other side of the carriage, his eyes shut and his face slack, and Sylvain feels himself sliding towards unconsciousness, too. Magical healing takes energy from the body it’s healing to do its work.

He needs to stay awake. Needs to track how long the carriage moves before reaching its destination, if he and Felix have any hope of figuring out where they’re going. But his exhausted body betrays his mind, and the world goes dark.

* * *

Sylvain wakes to a dull, throbbing ache that pervades every inch of his body, as well as the sense that he’s lost a significant amount of time.

Felix is on the ground beside him, eyes cracked open but staring sightlessly at a place behind Sylvain’s head. Whatever healing Dorset performed on him, it wasn’t enough to heal his concussion, probably on purpose.

“Fe,” Sylvain whispers. He tries to sit up, and his entire ribcage throbs. Wincing, he scoots across the cold, damp stonework to rest a hand on Felix’s shoulder.

Neither of them have their armor on. The realization that they were stripped of their gear without even waking makes Sylvain’s stomach turn uneasily. The chill of the cell makes the hair on Sylvain’s arms stand up beneath the long-sleeved linen tunic he wears under his gambeson; he can’t imagine how cold Felix is in nothing but his sleeveless turtleneck and his thin cotton pants. They even took his boots and spats – Sylvain’s too, now that he’s glancing down at his bare feet and wiggling his toes.

Felix’s head turns, very slowly. He blinks a few times, and the haze in his eyes clears somewhat. “You’re awake,” he murmurs.

“Yeah.” Sylvain runs his thumb across the bare skin of Felix’s shoulder. “You okay?”

Felix lets out a derisive snort. “We’re beaten, barefoot, and unarmed, at the mercy of our captors in some broken-down dungeon we don’t know the location of. No. I’m not okay.”

“Stupid question.” Sylvain shifts his hand to the back of Felix’s head, where he remembers Felix took a nasty blow. There’s blood matted into his hair, but Felix doesn’t do more than wince a little as Sylvain prods the area with gentle fingers. “Things aren’t looking great for us, are they.”

“They haven’t killed us.” Felix reaches out a tentative hand and runs it across Sylvain’s ribs, likely checking to see if any of them are shifting under his skin. “That means we’re more valuable alive than dead, at least.”

“That’s not particularly comforting,” Sylvain says, breaking off with a hiss of pain as Felix pokes at a particularly sensitive bruise. “I, _ah,_ I can’t think of many scenarios that _don’t_ end in us getting tortured for information.”

“Maybe they just want a ransom,” Felix replies. It’s clear he doesn’t believe it, though. Whoever took them wouldn’t go through all the trouble of transporting them to a separate location with a functional prison if they didn’t mean to keep them for a long while.

Though _functional_ is perhaps overselling it. Sylvain sits up a little and surveys their surroundings more thoroughly. It becomes clear that he and Felix aren’t imprisoned together out of kindness but necessity; the rest of the cells in the hallway are dilapidated to the point of uselessness. He files that bit of information away. An unobtrusive hiding spot is one thing, but it seems their captors simply lack the resources for a better-equipped prison. Even the bars on their own cell are rusted.

A door opens somewhere down the hall. Sylvain and Felix both scramble to their feet, like somehow they’ll be less vulnerable if they’re upright. It’s the healer from the wagon – Dorset, Sylvain thinks – along with the woman who skewered Felix and two other men Sylvain doesn’t recognize.

“Ah, you’re awake,” the woman says. “Good. We have some questions for you.”

“And I’m sure you’ll be perfectly polite about it if I refuse to answer them,” Sylvain says, unable to resist a bit of snark.

Luckily, the woman is either feeling forgiving, or she just considers Sylvain so beneath her notice that it doesn’t matter what he says. “I figure both of you will probably need some persuasion,” she says. “Who wants some one-on-one time with me?”

“The Fraldarius probably knows more,” Dorset says, tapping a foot against the cracked stone floor. “They’re cozy with the Blaiddyds, ain’t they?”

“Heard this one isn’t so friendly with his liege,” the woman replies. “Then, I’ve also heard the Prince is more of a beast than a man, so.”

“Don’t talk about him like that,” Felix hisses. Some hysterical part of Sylvain wants to laugh. Felix can call Dimitri a beast all he wants, but those words on the lips of strangers bring Felix fury like nothing else.

“Cute,” the woman says, looking bored. “Maybe he’ll keep being this chatty for us. Dorset?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Dorset mutters, lifting a hand that’s crackling with magical energy. Sylvain opens his mouth to argue – he can sweet-talk his way into their torture chambers, he can spare Felix the pain – but Felix is already collapsing into a shrieking heap, limbs writhing with the thunder spell Dorset is subjecting him to.

 _“Felix!”_ Sylvain drops to his knees beside Felix’s twitching body, reaching out his hands but afraid to touch Felix just in case it causes him more pain.

“Unless you wanna see him dance again, I’d recommend backing off and letting us take him,” the woman says, opening the cell door and stepping inside. She’s unarmed, but Sylvain and Felix are both injured and at the mercy of Dorset’s spells. The other two men are standing behind Dorset, ready to step in at the first sign of trouble. Sylvain has no illusions about who has the upper hand here.

“Take me instead,” Sylvain tries to coax. He doesn’t rise from his kneeling position, but he does sit back on his heels and raise his hands in a show of deference. “He still has a head injury. How coherent do you think he’ll be?”

“It’s funny that you’re acting like you’ll be more cooperative somehow,” the woman snorts. “I know your type. You’ll try to talk circles around us and make us think we’re getting somewhere, when all you’re actually giving us is fluff.”

She’s sharp. Sylvain was planning to do exactly that. If it’s information they’re after, he can give them all kinds of it that won’t amount to anything.

“I’m not going to give you anything,” Felix wheezes, his limbs still trembling from the aftershocks. 

“Heard that one before,” the woman tells him, with a shade of what might be sympathy in her voice. “Nothin’ personal, Fraldarius. Turner might have a grudge, but I don’t. I just get paid good money to pry secrets from people like you.”

 _People like you._ That could mean anything, but if they mentioned the Blaiddyds, it probably means she’s working for a group that’s specifically anti-Dimitri – that probably means anti-Kingdom, too, but Sylvain’s not ruling anything out. Gautier and Fraldarius are historically the closest to the royal family. Sylvain’s mind keeps turning as the woman stoops to grab Felix by his still-injured arm and haul him to his feet.

“Don’t be stupid,” Felix whispers as he’s pulled past Sylvain. _Don’t fight back. Not until we’re sure we can win._ Sylvain gives him a shallow nod, even though his heart screams at him to get up, to fight, to keep Felix safe.

The cell door slams shut. The lock turns.

“Why, Brionne, the way you were talkin’, I’d almost think you were going soft,” Dorset says as he ambles down the hall after the woman. One of the men who was standing behind him points a sword at Felix’s throat in one final reminder not to try anything, and Sylvain’s heart thuds with cold, frightened rage. “It’s been awhile since I’ve heard you say a job was nothing personal.”

“Hey, most nobles do nothin’ but sit on their high horses and let the commonfolk do the fighting for them,” the woman, Brionne, replies, her voice fading as she leads Felix down the hallway. “Turner might hate their guts, but I can at least show a little respect to a couple that do their own fighting, too.”

They talk like sellswords. Sylvain eases his aching body onto the straw mattress in the corner of the cell, shaking with tension but in too much pain to pace. This is a job they were hired for, though at least one of them – Turner – might have a personal stake in it. He needs more information to come to a solid conclusion, but he suspects that whoever hired them is not working through official channels, Empire or Alliance or Kingdom or otherwise. It’s too sloppy, and their base of operations too run-down.

He makes a frustrated noise that he muffles against his fist. They may lack resources, but they’re not amateurs. The location of the hideout, their numbers, their employers – Sylvain has no way to guess any of these things with any accuracy, and that makes planning an escape incredibly difficult. On top of that, their captors have rightly guessed that the quickest way to ensure obedience is to use Felix’s pain against him, and vice versa. If they try to escape and fail—

Unbidden, he remembers the bottom of the well.

Cold, dark, wet. No way to climb out, no way for anyone to know where he is. Helpless to do anything but wait for death or rescue. He’s not alone this time, but in some ways, that makes the situation even worse.

He curls into himself into a loose ball and pretends he can’t hear it when Felix starts screaming.

* * *

They bind Felix to a chair, his arms wrenched around the back of it and lashed together at the wrist. His ankles are tied to the legs, which are bolted to the floor to keep him from thrashing the chair over. The realization that he’s about to be tortured sits numbly in the pit of his chest. Perhaps he could spare himself the pain if he simply answered their questions – and he hates the part of him that considers it, that thinks: _even Dedue’s return couldn’t make that boar sane, you don’t owe him anything_ – but he will not, cannot, betray the Kingdom so easily. Betray the Professor. Betray Dimitri, betray himself.

It just the woman – Brionne, he thinks he heard – and another person, whose hulking silhouette looms in one of the room’s corners. Dorset sits on the floor beside the door, flipping through a tome. Presumably he’s just there to bring Felix back from the brink, should one of his injuries go too far.

“We’ll start easy,” Brionne starts, but the hulking man uncurls from the wall and approaches Felix. His full height is frighteningly impressive, and he’s _broad._ He scowls at Felix, the scar slashing through his lip contorting with the expression.

“No,” he rumbles. His voice is deep and rough, and it’s haunted by years of festering anger in the same way the boar’s is. It sends a shiver racing down Felix’s spine, though he hates how instinctual the fear is. The man continues, lumbering closer, “I don’t think this noble brat deserves _easy.”_

Brionne snorts. Felix’s eyes flicker to her, then back to the man, then back to her when she starts to speak. “That’s right. You’re Kingdom, aren’tcha? What, nobles not kind across the border?”

Now that she’s said it aloud, Felix realizes the familiarity to the boar wasn’t just in the tone of the man’s voice; it’s in his light accent. He sounds like he’s from the Capital. Felix’s mind races with the jumble of new information, but he’s never been any good at filing things away the way Sylvain is. He’s the sword the Professor points at an enemy, and he’s the shield that keeps his allies safe. He fights, he grows stronger, he survives. On the battlefield, things are that simple. 

But this is not a battlefield, and Felix is unarmed in unfamiliar territory, at the mercy of unknown enemies.

“None of your ilk care much that folks are starving in the streets of Fhirdiad, huh?” the man says, almost thoughtfully. He twirls a knife between his fingers with the practice of a street performer. “Heard your daddy sent aid to the monastery. Coulda used those soldiers and all that food in the capital, you know.”

“This is pointless,” Felix says coldly. “It would be suicide to march into Dukedom territory.”

“So the lives of all your prissy nobles and their prissy knights are worth more than the people dying in the streets, huh?” The man snorts derisively. “Should have seen that coming.”

Felix doesn’t respond. He can’t. Not when he’s thought the same thing, listening to Dimitri’s mutters about hanging the Emperor’s head from the gates of Enbarr as the people of Fhirdiad beg for the return of their King. This man’s still a bastard for turning on the Kingdom and working with what Felix assumes are Imperial hirelings, but his feelings are all too real.

“Nothing to say to that, huh. Typical.” The man is looming over him now. He’s six feet of solid muscle, and Felix has to make a conscious effort not to cringe away. He won’t be intimidated.

“Turner, those don’t sound like questions,” Brionne puts in, sounding a bit exasperated.

“Hmph.” Turner spins the knife one more time before gripping it in his hand. He leans in until his rank breath blows hot on Felix’s face. Felix narrows his eyes and stares back, despite the way his heartbeat quickens at the imminent danger. “Awful delicate for the Shield of Faerghus’s brat, aren’t you?”

Felix spits in the man’s face.

Turner rears backwards, swiping at his face with his free hand. “You little shit,” he hisses, eyes alight with wild fury. Somewhere behind him, Brionne is cackling. “Shut the fuck up!” he barks over his shoulder, and the laughter stops. He crowds in closer to Felix, boxing him in against the back of the chair, forcing him to lean backwards to prevent their heads from colliding. “Think you’re so cute, don’t you? Think you’re better than me?”

“Fuck you,” Felix snaps.

“You’d think a noble brat would be raised with better manners.” Turner’s eyes narrow. “You and your daddy both love that hair of yours, don’t you?”

Felix freezes. It’s something of a Fraldarius tradition to keep long hair, and it’s been in practice for so long that no one remembers its origin. Felix is being a little rebellious, even, having his hair as short as he does. Fraldarius traditions aren’t _secret,_ exactly, but the fact that this man knows even this much about him is— unsettling.

“Pride of the Fraldarius, and all that.” Turner grips the knife tight enough that his knuckles turn white. “Fuck you. You aren’t any better than the rest of us lowlives down here at the bottom.” Turner gathers most of Felix’s hair up in a fist and uses it to wrench Felix’s head backwards. Unrelenting, Felix glares back.

The knife moves. Felix’s eyes shut reflexively at the flash of steel, but it doesn’t connect with his face. There’s a slicing noise before the pressure on his skull vanishes entirely.

“Pell’s gonna be mad. He’s less pretty this way,” Brionne says, cutting through Turner’s heavy breathing. Felix cracks open his eyes to the sight of his own hair clenched in Turner’s fist.

It didn’t hurt. It’s just hair. He’s cut it himself plenty of times with even less care than Turner showed now. But his head feels light, like he’s been untethered from something. Strands of his hair flutter out from between Turner’s fingers, and Felix tracks their descent with his eyes as if dreaming. 

“You’re a noble out there, but in here, you’re nothing,” Turner sneers. He opens his hand, and the rest of Felix’s hair drops to the filthy stone floor.

“Now then,” Brionne coos, sidling up beside Felix and running her hand across the short, bristly hair on the back of his head. The unfamiliar sensation sends a shudder down his spine. “Why don’t you be good, and answer some questions for us?”

Felix curls his lip at her. “As if.”

“When are you marching back to Myrddin?” Brionne asks, scratching her fingers across his scalp. “How many strong?”

“Fuck you.”

He hisses in pain as Turner gives one of his bound arms a shallow cut. “I’d answer the lady’s question.”

Glaring up at Turner even as blood starts to trickle from the fresh cut, Felix scowls. “I won’t. Don’t bother.”

“I’ll ask you again before Turner gives you more than just a little papercut.” Brionne loops around the front of the chair and looks Felix in the eye. “When are you marching back to Myrddin to fight at Gronder?”

Felix glares back for a few moments before deliberately turning his head away.

“You asked for it,” Turner grunts. 

The knife jabs with a sudden ferocity into the soft crook of Felix’s elbow, and he cries out in both surprise and pain. Turner twists the knife, and Felix bites his tongue to stop himself from making any more noise.

“Aw, don’t be shy,” Turner says, sickly sweet. He rips the knife out and presses the point against the bump of one of Felix’s ribs. “Let me hear you.”

And despite Felix’s attempts to silence himself, he does.

* * *

“I didn’t tell them anything,” is the first thing Felix whispers when he staggers back into their shared cell.

He looks—haggard. Tired. He’s bleeding from several cuts on his face and arms, and his shirt is soaked through with dark, wet splotches. When Sylvain reaches out to steady him, he sucks in a sharp gasp at the sight of Felix’s shorn hair. It’s an unnecessary, dehumanizing touch that somehow rips at the strings of Sylvain’s heart even more than the physical injuries do.

“I care more about how you’re doing,” Sylvain says carefully, helping ease Felix onto the straw mattress in the corner of the cell. Felix trembles, his eyes half-focused, his face tense with what Sylvain can only assume is pain.

“They… healed me. Before I could bleed out,” Felix says, sounding scornful. Sylvain grips the hem of Felix’s shirt and waits for Felix’s nod before he lifts it.

Long, deliberate cuts trace the lines of Felix’s ribs, right over the bones where it would hurt the most. Some of them are still bleeding sluggishly. 

Slowly, gently, Sylvain uses what little water they’ve been given to clean out Felix’s cuts that are still open. He runs his palms soothingly over Felix’s stomach whenever Felix gets too tense. Their captors have left them a small meal, and when Felix’s hands tremble too much to bring the bread to his mouth, Sylvain feeds it to him.

“We have to get out of here,” Felix murmurs against Sylvain’s fingers as Sylvain offers him another chunk of bread.

“I know,” Sylvain says. “I’m… I’m thinking.”

“Turner,” Felix says suddenly, jerking upright. “He’s from the Kingdom. I think this is an Imperial group, but he hates the noble families of Faerghus.”

Felix’s shorn hair suddenly makes more sense, and Sylvain hides a wince. “That’s something.” He rests his hands in his lap, tapping his fingers against his thighs thoughtfully. “They don’t have a lot of resources, so I doubt they’re working officially. I guess it’s a bit of a relief that our classmate-turned-Emperor wouldn’t go so far as to order us to be tortured.”

Felix glares at Sylvain’s attempt at levity.

“Still, I don’t know how easy it will be to get out of here,” Sylvain continues softly. “They have numbers, and they have… us.” He offers a helpless shrug. “If I had to choose between escaping without you and being stuck here with you, you know which one I’d pick.”

“It’s the stupid choice,” Felix mutters, but he doesn’t disagree.

And what a way for their promise to be fulfilled, if they do end up dying in this hole. Sylvain wants to cry at the absurdity of it all. A Professor and a Prince risen from the dead, the Great Bridge taken against all odds, a march for a continent-wide clash at Gronder set in their sights, and this is where Sylvain and Felix die. Not in glory on a battlefield. Not for crown and kingdom. No, they’ll be tortured to death in some nowhere ruin in the middle of the mountains with only each other to hear their screams.

Their situation is nearly hopeless. Even though the Kingdom army likely has the resources to track them down, he doubts Dimitri will have the presence of mind to do so. Nothing weighs heavier on Dimitri’s heart than his desire for revenge, now. He’s willing to grind his army to paste against the Emperor’s on Gronder Field. Why would Sylvain and Felix’s deaths matter any more to him because they’re happening off the battlefield?

But Sylvain doesn’t voice these thoughts. Doesn’t try to snuff the defiant ember of hope still burning in Felix’s eyes – the part of Felix that believes in Dimitri and has never managed to die.

“Let’s try to get some sleep,” he says instead, tucking an arm around Felix and gently encouraging him to lie down.

They pass the night uneasily, pressed back-to-back on the thin mattress. The clattering of the door at the end of the hall jerks both of them back to wakefulness, and it’s Sylvain they take this time – Brionne and Dorset holding an arm each, with two other men behind poking his back with a sword. Sylvain goes quietly, if only because he knows they’ll drop Felix in a heartbeat if Sylvain kicks up a fuss.

“The Gautier,” the man Felix called Turner says when they march Sylvain into a dark, torchlit room. Another man – taller, broader, with a sneer on his face that Sylvain doesn’t like – stands against the wall with his arms folded. A brazier burns in the middle of the room.

“I still think we should try to get a bit of extra money by sellin’ them back to their daddies after we’re done with them,” the man with the ugly sneer says. “You hate nobles, but you love their money, right? It’d be like getting paid twice.”

Turner scoffs. “This one’s daddy wouldn’t pay a copper to get him back.” He lands a well-aimed kick on Sylvain’s kneecap, and Sylvain buckles involuntarily, hissing a sharp breath through his teeth.

“That’s not a very nice thing to say,” Sylvain wheezes.

“Margrave Gautier doesn’t care for weak heirs, does he?” Turner says with a laugh. “No Crest, no inheritance. You’ve got a Crest, but I can’t imagine he’ll think too kindly of you when he sees what you’ve let us to do you.”

“I look forward to your hospitality,” Sylvain says with a smile that’s all teeth. They drop him into the chair that’s bolted to the floor and lash his arms behind him. The brazier is close enough that it’s warming his shins, and his heart thunders in his chest.

“The Fraldarius, though. That one’s soft for his son,” Turner says, almost thoughtfully. “I don’t think I wanna go so far as to give him this one back, but I’m sure I can arrange a little present for him.”

“Don’t—” Sylvain swallows the rest of the phrase _don’t you fucking touch him._ An expression of emotion, of weakness, is only a disadvantage on a field like this. They already know they can use Felix against him. Best not to show them how much. “Don’t you think you should at least send my father a letter and ask him what he thinks?” he says instead, fluttering his eyelashes.

It sits in the pit of his chest like rot – the knowledge that his father _wouldn’t_ pay for Sylvain’s safe return. A holdover, perhaps, from centuries of warring with Sreng. If a Gautier is weak enough to be captured, they’re weak enough to be left for dead; a truly strong heir will break free of his bonds and return home on his own. Negotiating with kidnappers has never been the Gautier way.

“Don’t be a wise-ass,” Brionne advises him dryly from where she’s tightening the ropes.

“I almost feel bad for you,” Turner says as he grabs one of Sylvain’s ankles. “But not quite. Tell me, Gautier – when is your army marching back to Myrddin?”

“Oh, you know they never tell me these things,” Sylvain says flippantly. He grits his teeth as Turner forcefully moves his foot towards the surface of the brazier, and his mind goes white when his skin presses against it. The metal _burns,_ the fire licking at the soft sole of Sylvain’s foot, and he _screams._

Turner releases him, letting him pull the wasteland of agony that is his left foot back towards relative safety. “How many strong is your army?” he asks.

“I—I don’t know,” Sylvain stammers, and even though he’s prepared this time, his voice still tears itself from his throat in an agonized wail as his foot is slammed back against the brazier.

The questions and the subsequent agony blur into one another. Questions about the army, about supply lines, about Dimitri and the Professor. Sylvain knows he doesn’t break, because he’s devolved into incoherent sobs by the end of it, unable to form so much as a single sentence. The journey back to the cell is lost to him, and he wakes on the floor with Felix’s worried face leaning over him.

“I’m okay,” he croaks, offering Felix a smile.

“Your feet,” Felix whispers, glancing down Sylvain’s body.

Sylvain’s pretty sure they either dragged him back to the cell or he blacked out from the pain for the duration of the walk, because there’s nothing at the ends of his legs but twin stars of white-hot agony. 

“No worries,” he tries to lie. But his voice shakes with pain, and Felix frowns down at him.

“Sylvain,” he says, softly, reprimanding. But he helps move Sylvain to the mattress, to their only semblance of comfort here, and he doesn’t say anything else. Just holds Sylvain, and holds him, and holds him, until the rattling door wakes them both again.

“Hey!” the rough voice of the man with the ugly sneer echoes down the hall. “Got breakfast for you little brats!”

“Nice of them to mention that they’re here to feed us, not torture us,” Sylvain says faintly. Felix scowls and sits up, placing his body between Sylvain and the bars like that will help at all. It’s cute. It’s heartbreaking.

The man, followed by a small entourage of heavily-armed individuals, stops in front of their cell with a grin on his scarred face. “Aw, protecting your boy, are you?” he coos at Felix. “What a pretty little thing you are. So loyal.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Felix snarls, and Sylvain both hates that Felix is antagonizing the man and fiercely agrees with the sentiment. Sylvain’s heard lust before, and the kind that’s lilting in the man’s voice is dark and dangerous.

“Don’t be mad, precious. I’m here to feed you.” The keys jingle against the door, and Felix tenses as if preparing for an escape as the hinges creak. But Sylvain’s feet are a charred mess – he can’t run, as much as he wants to, and Felix can’t run without Sylvain. The tray clatters onto the stone floor, and Sylvain jerks upward in alarm when the man closes the cell door behind him instead of leaving.

“Thought you saved the conjugal visits for the other room,” Sylvain says warily. He regrets his wording immediately when a predatory smile splits the man’s face.

“Not today, sweetheart,” he says.

“Stop _calling_ him that!” Felix nearly shouts. The men outside the cell clatter their weapons against the bars, and Felix flinches back towards Sylvain’s side.

“Pell, maybe you should let one of us in there with you,” one of the men says uncertainly.

The man – Pell – rolls his eyes. “I’m used to dogs with a little bit of bite. Besides, Turner’s heading to town this morning, and he wants this done before he leaves.”

A chill courses through Sylvain’s veins as he struggles to sit up. His entire body aches, and his feet scream in pain as he shifts, but he can’t stay on his back for this.

“Gimme your hand, precious,” Pell says, gesturing at Felix.

“Fuck off,” Felix says. The waver in his voice is tiny, but Sylvain hears it, and he clenches his fists on the mattress.

He could launch himself off this bed and strangle Pell. He might even be able to break his neck before the reinforcements could get into the cell. _Or maybe they’d just jab a lance through the bars and gore you like a bull,_ he thinks bitterly as he forces his hands to relax.

Pell snorts. “Stubborn.” He moves too quickly for Felix and Sylvain’s tired reflexes to catch, grabbing Felix’s right wrist in his hand and slamming it onto the stone floor. Felix lets out a sharp, cut-off whine of pain – they never did fully heal him from when he was impaled on Brionne’s lance.

“Stop it,” Sylvain hisses, struggling to rise.

“It’ll be quick,” Pell says, unsheathing a knife. “Just a little present for your daddy.”

Sylvain realizes what Pell is doing moments too late. _“Stop—”_

But the knife has already sliced through Felix’s pinky and onto the floor with a sharp _click,_ and there’s blood gushing from the empty place on Felix’s hand, and there’s a sick moment of silence before an animal wail tears from Felix’s chest.

“Thanks, sugar,” Pell says, running a hand across Felix’s shorn hair with a long, lingering touch. Sylvain bares his teeth at him, lunging across Felix as if to protect him with his body, and Pell laughs before leaving the cell with Felix’s finger. His fucking _finger._ Like he was just running a fucking errand and removing a part of Felix’s body was just the last thing on his to-do list, and Felix isn’t writhing on the floor clutching his bleeding hand, whimpering in pain.

“You’re fucking _sick!”_ Sylvain roars as Pell saunters down the hall. “You—you—”

The door at the end of the hallway slams shut, and Sylvain is left with nothing but Felix’s soft cries of pain to fill the silence.

“Here, let me—” Sylvain winces as he shifts, his tender feet dragging across the rough woolen sheets, but he swallows the pain and takes Felix’s hand into both his own. He bundles one of his sleeves around his hand and presses the cloth firmly against the bleeding stump of Felix’s finger.

“Fuck, fuck, _stop!”_ Felix howls, struggling to pull away, but Sylvain is unrelenting.

“I need to stop the bleeding,” he pleads. “I’m so sorry, Felix, _please.”_

“Sylvain,” Felix whispers, but he seems to be regaining himself, because the squirming stops. He drops his head, and Sylvain tightens his grip on Felix’s hand.

“I’m so sorry,” Sylvain repeats.

“You weren’t the one that chopped my fucking finger off,” Felix snarls, raw pain bleeding into rage.

“I… I know.” Sylvain lowers his gaze to the red liquid soaking through his tunic sleeves, and he doesn’t tell Felix that what he’s sorry for is that he has no idea how he’s going to get them out of this alive.

Time means little as the hours slide into days. Sylvain gets a break from the brazier, probably so the burns don’t kill all the nerves in his feet, but instead finds himself subjected to a thumbscrew on his toes and something that looks like a wool comb. He and Felix bear similar wounds at the end of each day – crooked toes, crooked fingers, backs flayed into long, narrow strips, just healed enough that they’ll survive for another day of it. Their meals are small and infrequent, and they grow weak not just from their accumulating injuries but from starvation.

Sylvain tracks the time by the way Felix’s shorn hair grows slowly into something Sylvain can almost wind around his fingers. It’s physical proof of how long they’ve been here in this darkness, injuries oozing with infection, ribs jutting more and more through their skin; if Felix’s hair has grown this much, it’s had to have been at least a month, if not more.

And still, every time they lie down to sleep, Felix says, “We’re going to get out of here.”

And though Sylvain knows they won’t, never once does he tell that to Felix.

* * *

It’s Felix’s turn in the Room today.

Brionne pries him from Sylvain’s side and drags him out into the hall so quickly his hunger-weak legs stagger underneath him. Sylvain makes a noise of protest, but he doesn’t follow. It’s easier for them both if he doesn’t follow. Felix knows that, but there’s still some small, animal part of him that’s crying out for Sylvain’s help when he thinks about the suffering he’s about to endure.

And he must endure. He mustn’t be weak. He’s a Fraldarius. A shield, unbreakable and unmoving. He will survive until his escape, or he will die with dignity.

He lets himself scream freely when they pin his feet to the brazier, but he does not talk. He nearly sobs when they crush his toes in the thumbscrew, but he does not talk. The noises he makes when they drag him over the comb again are barely human—

But he does not talk.

They ask him about Myrddin, about Gronder, about Dimitri and the Professor, sometimes even about their allies – Baron Dominic’s niece, the Daphnel heir, the man from Duscur. Familiar questions, by now, and he does not talk.

“It’s like you’re an animal,” Brionne says, sounding almost impressed. “You sure got a pair of lungs on you, but not a single word to be heard from you.”

“If he ain’t gonna use his mouth to talk,” the tall one – Pell, Felix thinks – puts in, “I can think of other things he could be doing with it.”

Brionne makes a disgusted noise. It takes Felix a heartbeat to figure out what Pell means by that, and when he does, he pulls against the ropes with a renewed vigor. The slices in his skin, the fire on his feet, even losing his fucking hair and finger – all of that he can take. He can endure. But to be debased in this way, humiliated in this way—

In some act of helpless desperation, he turns to look at Brionne, who at least seems to disapprove. There’s thoughtfulness on her face alongside the contempt, though, and Felix’s heart sinks to his stomach.

“Ugh. Well, it’s not like anything else is working, and at least one of us might as well be having fun,” Brionne says, waving a dismissive hand. “Just don’t expect me to stay and watch.”

“You—you can’t,” Felix chokes out. It’s the first thing that’s come out of his mouth today that isn’t a scream of pain.

Pell is already adjusting himself in his pants, approaching Felix with a leer on his face. “You’re in no position to be giving me orders, precious.”

“Lech,” Brionne says, shaking her head. She gives Felix’s shin one last kick, more on principle than to cause actual pain, before moving for the door. “Whatever. Have fun. Don’t blame me if he bites your dick off.”

The door slams shut behind her, heavy and final. Felix is alone with Pell, who’s got his pants open and his cock in his hand.

He’s already hard. How long has he been getting off on Felix’s pain? Felix grits his teeth, vowing to make good on Brionne’s warning about Pell getting his dick bitten off.

“I can see the wheels turning in your pretty little head,” Pell says, almost conversationally. He gives his dick a few lazy pumps as he looms over Felix. “I’d suggest keeping your teeth to yourself, sweetheart.”

“Fuck you,” Felix hisses.

Pell laughs, rough and merciless, as he buries a hand in the choppy lengths of Felix’s shorn hair. He grips it so tightly that it’s painful and jerks Felix’s head back as he leans down to speak. “Don’t get any ideas,” he whispers, his breath hot and wet against the shell of Felix’s ear. “If I feel any teeth, I’ll kill that handsome friend of yours.”

The blood in Felix’s veins freezes.

“I’ll fuck him real slow, first,” Pell continues, still jerking himself off. Felix can’t move, can’t speak. “Maybe he’ll even enjoy it. And right before I come in him, I’ll slit his throat and you can watch the life bleed right out of him.” He pulls back, eyes glinting with cruel satisfaction. “Would you like that?”

Felix is dizzy. His mind feeds him images of what Pell is describing – Sylvain pinned to the stone floor of their shared cell, Sylvain crying as he’s violated, Sylvain’s eyes begging Felix for help as his life slips away.

“I said,” Pell says, giving Felix’s hair another yank, “would you like that?”

The threat is barely even implied, but Felix is speaking before he can think, his voice cracking. “No.”

“That’s what I thought.” Pell shoves Felix’s head down. The ropes dig into his arms and chest as he’s forced to lean over, his face right in front of Pell’s disgusting crotch. “So be a darling for me and get to work.”

Felix closes his eyes and opens his mouth.

* * *

It’s difficult to keep track of day and night here. There aren’t any windows, their meals come sporadically when they come at all, and Sylvain tends to lose time when he’s screaming himself hoarse under their captors’ tender mercies. Still, he and Felix have the closest thing to a daily routine that’s possible in this dark, painful place.

They sleep chest-to-chest, unable to press their backs together anymore because it hurts too much. They split their meals evenly; if the food comes when one of them is in the Room, the other waits for his return before eating. When one returns from the Room, the other holds him – tries to wrap any wounds that are still bleeding, sets any bones that need setting, pops dislocated shoulders and hips and knees back into place. It’s the only kind touch either of them gets in this place, and it’s the only way to keep each other sane when the rest of their existence has been reduced to starvation and torture.

They have a routine, and Sylvain rolls off the straw mattress and onto his knees when he hears the door at the end of the hall slam open and shut. There’s only one set of footsteps, accompanied by the sound of a body dragging on the ground, and Sylvain’s mind goes blank with panic as he thinks, _they’ve finally killed him._

But they wouldn’t bother bringing a corpse back to a cell. He clenches his fists at his sides, keeping himself away from the bars so whoever’s got Felix won’t waste time worrying about whether or not Sylvain’s going to stage a breakout when they open the door.

The man dragging Felix carelessly across the floor by his bound wrists is Pell. Sylvain’s teeth clench – more than any of these bastards, he fucking hates Pell. Pell whose touches linger too long, Pell who always smiles wider when Sylvain screams, Pell who calls Felix pretty in a voice that both Felix and Sylvain hate.

Still, Sylvain sticks to the routine. Felix is unconscious, or close to it; Sylvain can’t do anything stupid now, or he’s risking Felix’s life more than his own. The keys rattle against the bars as Pell opens the door, and he picks up Felix like a bag of refuse and tosses him into the cell before slamming the door shut.

Sylvain cries out and staggers forward onto his useless feet, but he’s too slow to catch Felix, whose skull cracks against the stone as he tumbles to the floor. He drops to his knees at Felix’s side, heedless of the renewed agony in his soles, and reaches out. His hands alight on Felix’s limp shoulders, and this is when their routine cracks.

Felix flinches.

He’s never flinched from Sylvain before. Not like this – not with his whole body recoiling away as if even the suggestion of touch frightens him to his core. All the agony Felix has endured has done little to damage his body’s trust in Sylvain’s good intentions. But Felix flinches, curling into himself as if wounded by Sylvain’s presence.

“Don’t touch me,” he begs. His voice is hoarse and broken in a way that doesn’t speak of screaming.

“Felix,” Sylvain says, hands hovering above his body, helpless.

Felix uncurls, just a little. He rolls over, and Sylvain’s entire body goes cold at the realization that there isn’t just blood smeared on Felix’s face.

“No,” Sylvain whispers. His fingers tremble where he’s still refusing to touch Felix after Felix’s initial rejection. “He… he didn’t.”

“Don’t say anything,” Felix tries to snap, but it comes out more like a plea. “I can’t— just— just don’t.”

“I won’t,” Sylvain promises him, because he’ll do anything, anything, to ease the pain in Felix’s expression. “Can… can I clean you up?”

Felix’s eyes are wet with tears. There are dried trails through the mess on his face, too, and Sylvain’s struck by the small, shattered thought that this is the first time Felix has cried since their imprisonment here.

“Okay,” Felix says, tiny, broken, lost. He’s so strong, in so many ways, but he’s never learned to protect himself from this. Not like Sylvain has. There are thoughts clambering in Sylvain’s mind, words that want to crawl out of his throat – _how far did he go, did he steal your first, I’ll rip his dick off and shove it down his throat until he chokes to death on it_ – but those are selfish things to say, things that are more for Sylvain’s benefit than Felix’s, and so Sylvain stays silent as he grips his sleeve in his hand and tries to clean the filth from Felix’s skin.

Felix holds himself perfectly still, and the effort it takes not to flinch again is obvious in the way his body trembles. Somehow, after everything the both of them have endured here, this is what sits the heaviest in Sylvain’s heart. To take their appearances, their pride, their autonomy, even parts of their bodies – these are things they can survive without. But to take Felix’s innocence, to take his trust in Sylvain, to take the one thing that brought them both comfort as they wait for their rescue or their deaths, is cruelty beyond what Sylvain can fathom.

“I don’t think any less of you,” Sylvain says after he’s done what he can to wipe Felix’s face clean. He knows Felix asked for silence, but he can’t bear the thought of Felix flinching not just from the fresh trauma, but from thinking Sylvain sees him as dirty or weak.

“Don’t,” Felix says, his voice wobbly and fractured. “I—I can’t think about it. Not now.”

“Okay.” Sylvain sits back on his heels. His skin is crawling with helpless tension. He needs to move. Needs to tear Pell to pieces. Needs to see the same fear in Pell’s eyes that Sylvain is forced to see in Felix’s now, needs to hear Pell beg first for his pathetic life and then for an end to the pain before Sylvain finally deigns to let him die.

He needs to hold Felix close. Needs to bring the spark back to Felix’s eyes, which are dull and haunted as he stares at the opposite wall, still lying on his back and bleeding sluggishly from the wounds he received in the Room. 

“Can I hold you?” Sylvain asks brokenly.

“We’re going to die here.” Felix’s voice is quiet. Resigned. He nods, though, and lets Sylvain tuck him gently against the skeletal lines of his chest.

“Felix…” Sylvain wants to lie to him. He wants to tell Felix not to give up hope. He wants to say anything that will bring even a hint of life back to Felix’s dark, dead eyes.

But he’s long since resigned himself to their shared fate, and when he tucks his face into Felix’s matted hair, he whispers, “At least we’ll die together.”

* * *

Felix’s hair is at least two inches longer than it was at the start of their imprisonment.

Mindlessly, barely present in his own body, Sylvain twirls the brittle strands around his fingers. Even the place that was shorn nearly to the scalp is long enough for him to toy with, though the new hair is thin and fragile.

Everything about Felix is thin and fragile, now. Felix and Sylvain both. Closing his eyes and tucking Felix’s trembling body against his chest, Sylvain only hopes that he can survive at least until Felix dies, because he can’t bear the thought of leaving Felix alone in this hole.

When the door slams open at the end of the hall, Sylvain curls around Felix’s form as best he can as if to shield him from whoever’s hands reach through the door. But the footsteps are—different. Ungraceful, unsteady, armor clattering against the stones. They stagger to a stop in front of Sylvain and Felix’s shared cell, and Sylvain can barely move his head to look as something grabs the door and pulls.

Felix cries out against Sylvain’s chest as the metal shrieks and breaks, afraid and uncomprehending, but Sylvain struggles into a more upright position as he recognizes the form that just wrenched a metal door off its hinges.

Dimitri is covered in blood. _Drenched_ in it. It’s splattered across his armor, his face, his hair – he looks demonic in the faint torchlight of the hall, his single eye gleaming from a red-stained face. He has Pell’s severed head gripped by the hair in his left hand, and when Sylvain squints his blurry eyes, there’s something fleshy shoved into Pell’s terrified, gaping mouth.

“I killed him,” Dimitri rasps, looking half-mad. “The disgusting things he said he did to you—”

The thing in Pell’s mouth. It looks like a piece of Pell’s body – a decently sized chunk of flesh. Not fingers, but—

“Good,” Sylvain breathes, clutching Felix’s limp form closer to his chest. Felix whines at the movement, and Sylvain relaxes his grip; at the pathetic noise of pain, Dimitri’s entire body language shifts from predatory to—well, something more like the Dimitri Sylvain used to know.

“Felix,” Dimitri rumbles, dropping the head onto the stone floor. It rolls a little, then stills, its grotesque expression facing the opposite wall.

“Don’t touch him,” Sylvain says, half advice, half plea, as Dimitri begins to move closer. Dimitri doesn’t seem to hear, or at least doesn’t acknowledge Sylvain’s words, as he tumbles to his knees beside Sylvain and Felix’s entangled forms.

“Felix,” he repeats, softer, more desperate. His hand moves towards where Felix’s face is mostly hidden against Sylvain’s chest. Felix’s flinch is a mindless, animal thing, the movement of a creature for whom touch has come to mean only pain, and Dimitri jerks his hand back as if burned.

“He’s scared,” Sylvain whispers. It’s such a tiny word for the enormity of the pain Felix is in. The enormity of the pain he and Sylvain _both_ are in – but Sylvain’s always been strong for Felix when it counts the most, and he can keep his own fear bound in iron until Felix is safe.

Dimitri’s eye flickers up to Sylvain. On his face is a more human expression than Sylvain has seen for months. “Scared,” Dimitri repeats. The weight of the emotion in his voice speaks all the words he can’t, or won’t. Felix’s feelings towards Dimitri have been mixed at best for years now, but rarely if ever has Dimitri been the cause of this kind of fear.

“You… came for us,” Sylvain manages to say. His thoughts are more coherent than Felix’s are, but only barely. He doesn’t know how long he’s been in this hole. He doesn’t know when he ate last. He doesn’t know much of anything anymore except the feeling of Felix’s skeleton beneath his hands. “You didn’t…” Didn’t leave us here. Didn’t let us die.

“I could not bear it,” Dimitri whispers, voice hoarse. “The ghosts, they—they screamed at me to leave you. That you had long since died, and only her head would bring you peace. I could not bear it. I could not…” He shakes his head, slowly, dazedly. “Even if all I found were corpses, I…”

“Thank you.” Sylvain’s voice cracks, his eyes stinging like his body wants to cry. There’s not much left of him but bones and skin, and barely any moisture wells up behind his eyelashes. Felix will survive. Dimitri will take Felix from his arms, and bring him somewhere safe and warm, and Sylvain will never have to see Felix’s eyes dead with resignation again. He shivers, fingers digging divots into the pale, drawn skin of Felix’s shoulders.

Dimitri’s hand alights on Sylvain’s face. It’s gauntleted, cold and slick with blood, but Sylvain leans into it like an animal desperate for affection. A safe touch. A gentle touch. Felix has been too weak to do much but cling, but Dimitri is solid and strong where he cradles Sylvain’s cheek. 

“Sylvain,” Dimitri says, raw. “My Sylvain.”

“You’re here,” Sylvain sobs. He’s belonged to his captors for longer than he can fathom, suffered and watched Felix suffer, and the thought of belonging again to his Prince is a relief almost beyond imagining. “You came.”

“I have lost too much,” Dimitri says with a wobble in his voice. “Too much to leave you behind.”

Sylvain’s heart thuds with the realization that he was wrong. He was _wrong,_ and he’s never been happier to be so incorrect in his assumptions. He thought Dimitri would let them die. He thought revenge mattered more to Dimitri than anything. Anything. But here he is, holding Sylvain as gently as if Sylvain is more important than any of the ghosts screaming in Dimitri’s ears.

“Felix,” Dimitri tries again, softly. A single brown eye peeks out from where Felix is curled up against Sylvain’s chest. He’s trembling, from cold and hunger and fear, and there’s little in his face but the self-preserving terror of an animal about to die.

Dimitri’s hand shifts from Sylvain’s face to move slowly, tenderly, towards Felix’s. “Lushka,” he coos, just like he did when they were small and Felix was upset. _Lushka, don’t cry,_ Dimitri would say, holding Felix’s chubby little cheeks between his hands. _I’ll kiss it better._

“…Dimitri,” Felix breathes, his voice cracked and dry and hollow. He turns his head so he’s facing Dimitri more fully, though he doesn’t move to leave Sylvain’s arms. “Dima…”

His entire face softening, Dimitri lays his hand on Felix’s cheek. “I am here,” he says, impossibly gentle. “Your suffering is over. I am here.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> torture: throughout the chapter, there are graphic depictions of stabbing/slicing vulnerable parts of body (wrist, inner elbow, torso), as well as graphic depiction of feet being held against a burning brazier. there are non-graphic depictions of thumbscrewing (using a vice to break fingers/toes). in general, there are very graphic depictions of violence throughout this entire fic, as a blanket warning.
> 
> electrocution: there is a brief part directly after sylvix's imprisonment where felix is electrocuted with magic to subdue him; it's short and pretty non-graphic.
> 
> non-consensual haircuts/touching: the character turner touches felix uncomfortably and cuts off his hair during the first scene where felix is tortured. anything with the character pell is basically a noncon touching warning. sylvain and felix do not want to be touched throughout this entire fic and are touched anyway, but it's most graphic with turner and pell.
> 
> sexual assault: during the section that starts with "It’s Felix’s turn in the Room today," pell very graphically describes the act of sexually assaulting felix and sylvain, and proceeds to force felix to give him a blowjob. the physical act of the sexual assault is not graphically described aside from pell masturbating in front of felix. the aftermath of the sexual assault is described in non-graphic detail in the following scene with sylvain.
> 
> starvation: felix and sylvain are deprived food/fed small, infrequent, inadequate meals throughout the entire story, and there are some descriptions of how this is making them weak, skinny, and skeletal.
> 
> amputation: in the scene where pell is bringing sylvain and felix food, he cuts felix's finger off. it is described graphically, and the injury is later described as festering/infected, though that is less graphic. there is also part of the end scene with dimitri in which it is implied that pell's penis was torn off and put into his mouth, but this is NOT described in detail and is only a fleeting observation on sylvain's part.
> 
> decapitation: dimitri, in the final scene, is holding pell's severed head. the actual act of decapitation is not described.
> 
> EDIT: the lovely and incredible cosu @guessibetter drew some AMAZING ART for the last scene of this chapter!!!!!!! dimitri looks so terrifying and haunting and it’s EXACTLY WHAT I WAS PICTURING pls go look [here](https://twitter.com/guessibetter/status/1214094355570548736?s=21)
> 
> edit 10/7/2020: i saw [this](https://twitter.com/saccharinesylph/status/1313870754228903937?s=21) fanart and i fell in love with "lushka" as felix's childhood nickname instantly so i edited all instances of fe-fe to lushka


	2. where my ghosts all used to be

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as with last chapter, more detailed cws are in the end notes! please take care of yourselves.
> 
> this is the opposite pov of last chapter - the people at the monastery learning that sylvain and felix are missing, and working to find them. there's some h/c at the end, but the bulk of the comfort for the hurt i've subjected all of you to isn't until next chapter :( im sorry!!

They find Mariela’s corpse in the wood mere days after the scouting mission departs.

When Sylvain, Felix, and their commanders don’t return after two days, Ingrid brings her worries to Byleth, who purses their lips and agrees to send her and a small platoon out to search. Byleth joins them, sitting behind Cyril on his wyvern, and they stay low to the treeline as they follow the most likely routes the scouts would have taken.

Mariela’s body has already become a meal for scavengers, but her Faerghus blues are recognizable even from the air, and her face is still intact enough to identify her. There’s a single arrow protruding from her face, and no other injuries.

“Sniper,” Byleth murmurs, fingers brushing across the arrow’s tattered fletching. A few paces away from Mariela are signs of a struggle: footprints and furrows in the dirt, dried blood splattering the ground. There’s a splash of larger blood that smears out into a trail. A body dragged through the dirt.

Ingrid grows colder and colder as she takes the scene in. If Sylvain and Felix were victorious, there’s no way they would have just left Mariela’s body to rot – even if they couldn’t bring her back, they would have covered her with something to show a bit of respect for her body.

Byleth motions silently, and Ingrid and the rest of her men follow the drag marks to a small trail in the woods. There are wagon marks and hoofprints. This is where the blood trail ends.

“They probably went out to the mountain trade route,” Ingrid says, mentally mapping where the tracks are going. She feels her stomach twist in her abdomen. “There’s no way to track a single wagon on the main thoroughfare, not after it’s been days.” Especially not now, at the cusp of spring, when trade is just starting back up again in earnest.

“Smart of them,” Byleth says, their contempt faint but discernible for someone who knows them as well as Ingrid does. 

“D’you think it was a trap?” Cyril asks, glancing up at the Professor.

“It must have been. Mariela didn’t even get the chance to fight back.” Byleth’s expression is tense, angry, even a little fearful. “I sent them right into an ambush.”

“There’s no way you could have foreseen this,” Ingrid says, crossing her arms. Her heart is beating rabbit-quick in her chest, but her thoughts are cold. Rational. Picking the problem apart, turning it over in her mind. “We can probably assume they took Sylvain and Felix alive, if they had any idea who they were.”

“Pavel was with them. Either he’s dead and we just didn’t see his body, or…” Byleth trails off. Mariela was killed cleanly, with no hesitation. Pavel is a Kingdom soldier of common birth. There would be no reason not to do the same to him. 

“He’s working with our enemies,” Ingrid finishes with a grim frown.

“But who are our enemies…” Byleth nibbles on their thumb through their glove. It’s a nervous habit they developed over the course of teaching the Blue Lions those five years ago. Ingrid sees it more often these days than she ever did then. “The Empire is the most obvious choice, but to assume anything would be reckless before we have more information.”

“We should start by following the wagon tracks,” Ingrid says. “If we don’t get anything from that” – and she suspects they won’t – “we can return to the monastery and perform a more thorough investigation on Pavel.”

Byleth nods curtly, swinging back up into the saddle of Cyril’s wyvern. Ingrid climbs back onto her pegasus. The formation stays low to the ground, searching for clues along the wagon trail, but it’s as Ingrid suspected – the wagon joined up with the main trade road, which has too many tracks worn into its surface to discern even the direction the wagon turned when it got here.

The road is quiet. There are a few wagons visible in the distance, but most of the merchants have stopped to rest for the night; the approaching storm has darkened the sky long before sunset. Ingrid sits back in her saddle, and as she looks out at the cloud-covered mountains, her chest is hollow with a profound sense of loss.

 _They’re not dead yet,_ she tries to remind herself, but all she can see is the empty road stretching out before her and behind her, without the slightest hint of where her best friends could have gone. Just like everyone she’s ever loved, they scoffed and smiled and told her they’d be back before she knew it, that it was just routine, that nothing would happen.

But Glenn never returned. Dimitri came back, but he came back wrong. And now Sylvain and Felix are gone, not a trace of them remaining, like she’d never had them at all.

“Ingrid,” Byleth calls softly. She snaps out of her melancholy and turns her head. Byleth and Cyril are both watching her expectantly. “We should return to the monastery. The storm will be upon us soon.”

“Of course,” she says. Her voice sounds so cold. Unaffected. This is what she’s good at – following orders when the rest of her is falling to pieces. They can begin the investigation in earnest when they’re back in the monastery, with all its resources and spies and soldiers. Surely they can postpone taking the field at Gronder to rescue two of the most important members of Faerghus nobility. Surely…

She doesn’t think about what Dimitri might say, and instead clings to the dim ember of hope flickering in her heart.

The mood in the monastery drops almost palpably when they return empty-handed. Rodrigue and Gilbert stand silently by the entrance to the reception hall, and a few scattered members of the Blue Lions peer owlishly from the edges of the courtyard. When Byleth gestures with their head in the direction of the war room, everyone disperses, either to climb the stairs to the meeting room or to fetch the other people who will need to be there.

Ingrid stands silently at Byleth’s elbow as they recount the situation as it stands. Mariela dead, Pavel likely a traitor, Sylvain and Felix gone. She doesn’t let her expression change, even as the faces around the room twist and frown. Annette, clinging to Mercedes’s arm, looks like she’s about to cry.

“We’ll send a group to recover Mariela’s body,” Byleth says, thumb rubbing thoughtfully against their lower lip. “They can do another sweep of the area to see if there were any clues we missed.”

“How many resources do you plan to dedicate to this venture?” Gilbert cuts in. “Unless we receive ransom demands, we have precious little information to aid us.”

“That’s true,” Rodrigue says, more softly than Ingrid is used to hearing from him. “If we are to march on Gronder as planned, the amount of manpower and resources it will take to give us even a chance of finding them…”

“It will hobble the army.” Gilbert doesn’t look happy about it, especially when Annette turns a teary, betrayed gaze on him, but he does not waver. “Professor, with all due respect, it would serve us best to presume them dead.”

“Father, we can’t!” Annette explodes, tears streaming down her face in earnest. “They’re our friends! And—and—” Her fingers flex in the fabric of Mercedes’s shirt sleeve, where Mercedes has placed a soothing hand over Annette’s. “And they’re important, too! We can’t just leave a Fraldarius and a Gautier to die, right?”

“I agree,” Mercedes says, her face solemn. Ingrid sometimes forgets the strength of Mercedes’s composure in the face of adversity. “We can’t give up on them so quickly.”

“Surely our march for Gronder can wait.” Ashe wrings his hands on the war table, fingers twisting around one another nervously. “They’re our friends, but not only that, they’re… they’re important generals for the army.” His eyes flicker up, brightening a little as he realizes he’s seized upon a point Gilbert might listen to. “It’ll cause a considerable drop in morale if we don’t at least try to find them.”

Gilbert breathes out a heavy sigh, pinching the bridge of his nose. Ingrid studies him – the tired lines of his face, the helpless slump of his shoulders – and knows, with a sinking feeling in her gut, that he will not relent. She’s seen the same weariness in her father. This is a man resigned to tragedy, who believes nothing he does will change the course of fate.

The emotions Ingrid is trying to keep contained press up behind her stoic mask with a force that’s almost physical. Desperation writhing in the back of her skull like a nest of snakes, she turns to Rodrigue. Surely he will think past revenge and reconquest to rescue his only living son. Surely… Surely…

His face is grieved, but resigned. “I had hoped Felix would die more nobly,” he says in a near-whisper. It sounds fragile. Near shattering. “But his death will serve his Kingdom, all the same.”

The thin veneer of calm Ingrid has managed to cling to is torn away in an instant. “He’s not _dead_ yet!” she howls, launching herself from her seat to grab Rodrigue by the collar. “He’s not Glenn! He’s still alive, and his death wouldn’t serve anything but—”

“Ingrid,” Rodrigue interrupts, calm, sad, resigned. Detached. Like he’s trying to convince himself just as much as her. His hand rests on the fist she has clenched in his shirt. “With every war comes sacrifice.”

Ingrid rears back and punches him.

The war table clatters with activity, raised voices clamoring for attention, a hand gripping Ingrid’s upper arm and pulling her from Rodrigue. Rodrigue himself is slumped over the table, clutching his cheek, turning his head to look at Ingrid, slow and wide-eyed.

“You coward,” Ingrid spits, the rage boiling in her chest surging senselessly up through her throat in words she’s sure she’ll regret. “Glenn would be ashamed.”

Rodrigue’s lips part, but Ingrid is already whirling around, seeking out another face with a near-feverish desperation.

All the while, Dimitri has been watching. A silent, grim-faced sentinel, standing halfway under Dedue’s shadow. 

“You,” Ingrid snarls, tearful and angry and grieving. She storms up to his hunched, swaying form and glares straight up into his unfocused eyes. “Do you plan to forget about them, too? You won’t _tarry_ over their _corpses_ as we storm Enbarr?”

“That woman,” Dimitri mumbles, almost too quiet to understand. “Of course she would see fit to take them from me, as well.”

“They’re not _dead!”_ Ingrid cries. She hates herself for the hot tears that spill down her cheeks, unbidden and uncontrollable. “They’re not _dead,_ Dimitri, and neither are you!”

Her world’s been ending for five years now, the foundations of her beliefs crumbling beneath her feet, the things she holds dear slipping from her grip no matter how tightly she clings to them. Felix, Sylvain, and Dimitri aren’t the boys she once knew, but they’re still the men she loves. Leaving Felix and Sylvain to die won’t just mean losing them. She’ll lose Dimitri, too, and this time she knows she’ll lose him for good.

“Ingrid,” Dedue says, very softly. She whips around to face him, but at the gentle understanding she finds in his scarred face, she feels the fight drain from her body. One of his hands comes to rest gently on Dimitri’s shoulder, and he nods at her.

“I… apologize for my outburst,” she says stiffly to the room at large. When she turns to look, Rodrigue is still staring at her. There’s a vicious satisfaction that lashes through Ingrid at the sight of the bruise forming on his cheek. Byleth has the rest of the Blue Lions more or less corralled to a corner of the war table, along with Gilbert; they offer Ingrid a tilt of their head and a slow blink.

“Take some time to compose yourself,” they tell her gently.

Ingrid nods jerkily. With one last glance at Dedue, whose gaze is still trained on her despite his grip on Dimitri, she turns and leaves the room.

* * *

Despite Gilbert’s protests, Byleth mobilizes entire platoons of scouts to fan out across the area Sylvain and Felix vanished. And despite Rodrigue’s words, the moment he is given permission to search for his son, he throws himself into the task with untiring determination.

Ingrid pushes herself and her pegasus to the edges of their endurance. She flies along the trade road and stops merchants, her questions polite but with an edge of intensity that has those she speaks to answering quickly.

It’s fruitless. There’s no way to distinguish one wagon from the legions of them that traverse this road every week, and it isn’t as though the kidnappers would advertise the fact that they had taken Sylvain and Felix. Still, Ingrid pushes: she describes a man with black hair, a man with red hair, likely injured – maybe someone caught a glimpse of Sylvain or Felix being taken from the wagon to relieve themselves on the trip. Every blank stare and every shake of the head makes the small candle of hope in Ingrid’s chest splutter more.

She describes Pavel, too, in as much detail as she can recall. This bears slightly more success in the form of a merchant uncertainly offering that he thinks he saw a man like that heading west, maybe – the ambiguity makes Ingrid want to pull her hair out, but “west” is the closest thing they have to a clue.

“I also heard west,” Byleth says when Ingrid regroups with them on the road that leads back to the monastery. They tilt their head thoughtfully, eyeing the foggy jut of the Oghma Mountains in the distance. “If they’re holed up in the mountains, it will be very difficult to find them.”

The mountain range is full of twists and turns, secret places hidden by thick forests the entire year around. Even from the air, there’s no quick or easy way to search.

Still, it’s a place to start, and Ingrid clenches her fist and steels her resolve.

* * *

Days bleed into weeks. The army is at a standstill, holding its breath as scouts pour in and out with no further leads. Whispers of dissent grow louder – no common soldier would get this kind of treatment. No common soldier would be presumed alive after this long gone.

Dedue leans against the pillar inside the cathedral, exhaling slowly through his nose. There’s faint shuffling within His Highness’s usual haunt, but Dedue knows better than to bother him – he just returned from one of his nightly patrols, which Dedue suspects have turned into searches for Sylvain and Felix. 

His Highness’s behavior has grown… erratic, as of late. Even for him. It weighs on Dedue, just as Sylvain and Felix’s absence does. His Highness stalks the shadows of the monastery with a sleepless fervor, single eye glinting as he slips out from the walls at night to prowl the surrounding forests. Dedue accompanies him when he can, at a safe distance, but the Prince spent five years evading pursuers and Dedue cannot always manage. 

_I should have been with them,_ is the thought that his mind returns to, over and over.

Byleth had asked him to accompany Felix and Sylvain on that scouting mission. Dedue had, perhaps rightfully, attributed this request to Byleth’s attempts to separate Dedue from the Prince. He had respectfully declined, electing to stay at the monastery to keep an eye on His Highness.

If he had been there…

Perhaps he would have died, like Mariela. Perhaps he would have been taken captive, as well. But perhaps he could have protected Sylvain and Felix. He is a shield not just for His Highness but for the people His Highness holds dear – that Dedue has also come to hold dear, despite his misgivings.

Today marks two and a half weeks since Felix and Sylvain’s disappearance. The weather remains unseasonably cold.

Are they cold, where they are?

Dedue closes his eyes and tips his head back against the pillar. If they are in the mountains, as the Professor suspects, then it is almost certain that they’re cold. A captor would have little reason to keep them any warmer than is necessary to keep them alive.

Are they even alive?

The thought doesn’t strike Dedue so much as creep up in the back of his skull. They have received no ransom letter, nor have they found any clues beyond their initial leads. Even if they’re being used for information, there’s no guarantee they’d be kept alive if their captors deemed them useless. Or if the ultimate goal was to hobble Faerghus’s upper echelons by depriving them of the two most important families’ heirs.

 _Let Faerghus burn,_ some part of Dedue whispers. And some part of him wants to listen.

But the man shaking and muttering in the room across from him is the one thing Dedue cannot bear to lose. Dedue hates Faerghus, but he cannot hate Dimitri. And by virtue, he cannot hate Sylvain and Felix, and has found space in his heart for them despite everything.

“We will find them, Highness,” he murmurs. The sounds in the room stop for a brief moment, followed by an indistinguishable mutter and continued silence.

He knows that the hope he’s clinging to is… misplaced. It will be a miracle if they find Sylvain and Felix at all, let alone find them alive. But Dedue is tired. Tired of tragedy, tired of suffering – he’s so, so tired. What can he do but cling to hope? Hope that Dimitri will recover. Hope that Sylvain and Felix will return to them alive. Hope that the last few people he has left to love will make it out of this gods-forsaken war intact.

So he hopes. He isn’t so naïve as to believe they’ll find Sylvain and Felix entirely intact, but whatever’s been done to them, whatever they’ve suffered – he can fix it. Wounds can be mended; the more permanent ones can be adapted to. They’ve likely been starved, and Dedue rubs absentminded fingers across the Duscur-style brooch on his scarf as he considers his approach. 

The men of Duscur who rescued him from execution after he traded his life for Dimitri’s had to coax his body back from the brink of death, both from his injuries and from starvation. He’d been weak. Frustrated. Helpless and hungry, barely understanding why his body still hurt so much after weeks, months, years of recovery. Even now, his old scars ache when the weather gets damp.

“We will find them,” he repeats softly. “Whatever the state they’re in, they can recover. I will make sure of it.”

The room across the hall is silent. Dedue can only pray that His Highness can find sleep, even if Dedue cannot.

* * *

It’s been a few days since Turner sent the finger. It’s likely made it to the monastery, by now.

Pavel grimaces as he shoulders open the door to the basement, a tray of food in his hands. Turner had laughed and called him squeamish when Pavel protested the pointless act of cruelty. 

He has to believe what he’s doing is right. The Empire is the clear winner in this war. They have numbers, leadership, resources; the Kingdom has a half-mad prince and a starving army. To support the Empire is to end this war and end the suffering of the Kingdom’s people. He can endure watching the suffering of two men if it means Faerghus – all of _Fódlan_ – will suffer less in the end.

But it doesn’t make his stomach turn any less when he stops in front of the cell and peers down at Fraldarius and Gautier, whose skinny, blood-covered forms shiver the dark. Two sets of eyes glint hatefully from the shadows of the cell, even as Pavel slides the tray through the bars as an olive branch.

Pavel hasn’t spoken to them since their imprisonment here, just slid their food into the cell and went on his way. It becomes uncomfortably difficult to cling to his resolve when he spends too long looking at their gaunt, pained faces. But today, he settles on the floor across from the bars. More than two weeks they’ve been here, and not a single thing they’ve said has been useful. The pain they’ve suffered and watched each other suffer has done nothing to loosen their lips.

“Why won’t you talk?” he asks them softly.

Gautier snorts. Fraldarius’s sneer is scathing, despite how he seems too weak to sit up. The stump where his finger used to be oozes with infection.

The weight in Pavel’s abdomen wriggles and churns. What’s happening here – it isn’t right. Pavel’s mother is probably turning over in her grave at the sort of person her son has become.

“I can convince them to let you go,” he hears himself blurting out. “If you give them what they want, I—I’ll tell them not to kill you.”

The laugh that tears out of Gautier is harsh and painful. “You and I both know you’re lying.”

Pavel shakes his head. Turner is beyond reason, but he’s sure he can convince Pell, Brionne, and Dorset that there’s more profit in releasing the two. Pell’s even brought it up, once or twice – the Gautier’s father might not be willing to pay a ransom, but the Shield of Faerghus might pay for the safe return of them both. “If you tell them what they want to know, I promise you’ll both leave here alive.”

Instead of laughing, Gautier studies him, his unnervingly intelligent eyes boring into Pavel’s with a pitying sort of contempt. “Saints above,” he mutters. “You _actually_ believe that. You’re watching what’s happening right in front of you, and you’re still capable of lying to yourself like that.”

“It’s not a lie,” Pavel tries to insist, despite how much Gautier’s words feel like a twisting knife.

“If I gave half a shit about you,” Gautier says, head tilted, expression terrifyingly blank, “I might be impressed.” He turns away, lying down beside Fraldarius as if to shield Fraldarius from Pavel’s view. “Fuck off. Don’t try to pull this shit again.”

Pavel sits for a few minutes longer, but Gautier and Fraldarius don’t move, not even to get the food by the bars. Somehow, he feels even worse than he did before when he stands up to leave them.

* * *

There’s a little brown parcel tied with string in the middle of the war table. 

Byleth freezes upon entering the room. Ingrid barely avoids bumping into them, her eyes also fixed on the seemingly innocuous object.

No one uses this room except for the war council. It’s not necessarily suspicious that something was left for a member of the council to find, but there’s no name on the parcel. It’s strange enough, and Ingrid is tense enough, that it’s profoundly unsettling.

“Does this belong to anyone,” Byleth says, but it doesn’t sound like a question. Silence is their answer, and they nod shallowly as they approach the parcel. They pick it up delicately, turning it over in their hands.

“Have caution,” Rodrigue advises. He stands at Byleth’s other elbow, opposite to Ingrid. He tenses, as does Ingrid, as Byleth pulls the string to undo to the tie.

The parcel unfolds, and something small, pale, and waxy tumbles out onto the table.

“No,” Rodrigue breathes, but despite the horror in his voice, it takes Ingrid a few more moments to identify the object on the polished wood of the war table.

A finger.

Her stomach drops. Her vision swims. A finger, red flesh and white bone visible at its jagged base. In a parody of a nicely wrapped gift, there’s a lock of familiar black hair tied in a bow around the middle knuckle.

A finger, with Felix’s hair around it.

“No,” Rodrigue repeats, louder and angrier. Ingrid’s shoulders jump at his harsh tone, but she can’t seem to tear her eyes away from the severed finger.

“Is that,” Annette says, her voice wobbling.

“Oh, Annie,” Mercedes says softly. “Don’t look.”

Maybe—maybe it’s not Felix’s. Maybe someone just cut the finger off a corpse to play with their minds. Ingrid steels herself, taking a deep breath in through her nose and holding it, as she reaches out to pluck the finger from the table.

“It might not be his,” she says, haltingly. “We—we can test it, to see if it bears a Crest.”

“Good idea.” Dedue is beside her, voice and presence warm and steadying. She nods shallowly as she walks from the room, legs like wood, her brain swimming with the thought that she might be holding part of one of her best friends in her hands. Footsteps patter after her as she crosses the hall to Hanneman’s office.

The crest apparatus flickers for a moment as the finger rests on it. Ingrid holds her breath, unsure if what she’s feeling is hope or dread, and—

The Crest of Fraldarius blinks into existence.

“It’s… it’s his.” Rodrigue’s voice is faint. He sounds sick. Ingrid _feels_ sick. The Crest wavers in the air above the finger. No note. No ransom. It’s a _taunt._

“This means he’s still alive, right?” Annette says, her fingers knotted together, white-knuckled. “And—and we can still find him, and Sylvain!”

“Annette,” Dedue says, stern, sad, gentle. “If they only sent Felix’s, it is… unlikely that Sylvain still lives.”

Annette shakes her head fiercely. “No, we have to stay positive,” she says, manic in her conviction. “We—we have to believe they’re both okay. They’re both coming home. They have to.”

Her voice cracks, and Dedue does not try to convince her further.

“This… this means they can’t be too far away, though, right?” Ashe puts in timidly. “The, ah… finger doesn’t seem very old. It can’t have traveled far.”

“It’s been cold,” Ingrid replies, and she barely recognizes her own voice, like it’s someone else entirely using her mouth to speak. “If it came from the mountains, it could have been preserved for…” She swallows. Honestly, it could have happened at the start of their imprisonment, and it would still look the same now.

“It’s our only lead.” The Professor’s voice is flinty. All business. Ingrid straightens her spine at their tone, ready for orders. “Track down everyone who has been in this hallway. On this _floor.”_

It takes less than an hour to track down the person who left the parcel – a young girl dressed in modest clothes, clearly a commoner from the town surrounding Garreg Mach. Ingrid is with Dedue and Ashe when they find her.

“Sir Knight told me he had to deliver something very important to Duke—Duke—” She stumbles on the name. “The Duke. He said he was too busy with knight stuff, and that I’d be helping a lot if I brought it to the room on the second floor.”

“I see,” Ingrid says, numb.

“Did—did I do something wrong?” the girl asks, suddenly panicked. “I swear, he looked like a real knight! From Faerghus and everything!” She motions with her hands. “He had the—the blue cape!”

“You have done nothing wrong,” Dedue murmurs, kneeling down to the child’s level. “But we need to find the man who asked you to deliver that parcel.”

“So we can thank him,” Ashe says, his mouth barely twisting around the lie.

The girl brightens a little, though she still clings uncertainly to the hem of her dress. “He had brown hair, pulled back in a little ponytail.” She pulls her own hair back to demonstrate. With a wrinkled nose, she adds, “His beard was kind of ugly.”

 _Pavel. That sounds like Pavel._ Ingrid’s hands curl into fists, and she bites her tongue.

“Did he tell you his name?” Ashe asks softly.

“Nuh-uh.” The girl shakes her head. After a moment, she adds thoughtfully, “He was kind of dirty.”

“Like he’d been traveling a lot?” Ashe presses.

“I guess?” The girl tilts her head. “He came from the main road. Like he was in a hurry.” She rocks on her heels. “He left in a big hurry, too.”

“I don’t think we’re going to get anything else,” Dedue murmurs into Ashe’s ear, just loud enough for Ingrid to catch. Ashe nods shallowly.

“Thank you for all your help,” he tells the girl. Before he stands, he slips a coin into her palm, and he watches her with a complicated expression as she scurries off.

“Pavel came back,” Ingrid hisses. “He—he was _here.”_

“And now, he is not,” Dedue replies, but his face is tight. “We must report this to the Professor. Even if we cannot catch him, we may get an idea of where he is going.”

Despite how quickly Byleth sends scouts and troops, Pavel is long gone by the time anyone figures out where he was going. They’ve narrowed down potential locations to branches off a single mountain road, but there are still entire swaths of heavily forested land to search. Dusk is falling by the time Byleth forces Ingrid to return to the monastery and rest, and even then, she paces around the dark paths and corridors long into the night. The cathedral is eerily quiet when she passes it by, though she thinks she catches a dark shape slinking across the bridge when she finally returns to her rooms.

She lies on top of her covers, tears sliding silently down her cold-bitten cheeks as she stares into the murky darkness above her bed.

She does not sleep.

* * *

On the rare occasions Dimitri manages to sleep, his dreams are dark and fitful. He fumbles through dark places, the noises surrounding him cacophonous but impossible to distinguish, his hands wet with blood from people he does not remember killing. His sleep is light and easily interrupted, and a single sound cuts through the confusion of his dream.

“Boar,” a tiny, broken voice whispers. 

Despite its low volume, it jolts Dimitri awake from the pile of blankets on the cathedral floor, heart thudding violently against his ribs as his hand shoots to his weapon.

“Who’s there?” he demands. The darkness of the cathedral draws shapes in the shadows on the walls – monstrous things with horns and long claws. Their mouths move in grotesque reflections of speech but make no noise, and he turns from them to watch the door.

A shape, hunched and bleeding. Barely human. Eyeless, fingerless, dragging itself on its stomach like an animal near death.

“Dimitri,” it wheezes, reaching out the misshapen lump of meat at the end of its wrist. Blood drips heavily to the ground as it breathes. “You left me. Dimitri.”

The long hair pooled around its skeletal shoulders. The edge in its voice. _Boar._

Dimitri freezes, every bit of him turned to ice. “Felix.”

“You left me. You left me,” the thing wails, shuddering as it tries to move closer. The dark, wet holes in its face almost seem to cry as they drip blood onto the floor.

“I didn’t!” Dimitri tries to protest, fingers uncurling from his lance to reach for Felix’s broken body. “I—every night, I search—”

“He died in my arms, Dimitri.” The creature’s limbs tremble as it sinks into a pile on the floor. There’s little that is human about it – just a bloody mass, missing more pieces than it still has, naked and bleeding in the faint moonlight. “You left us. Dimitri… Dimitri…”

“I didn’t,” Dimitri moans, cradling his own face in his hands. “I couldn’t! I _will not!”_

Every breath makes the thing’s body heave. “I loved him. I loved you. Dimitri—”

Dimitri digs his fingers into his face and rakes his nails down his skin. “Felix—I will not—I cannot—”

The thing twitches, and shudders, and lies still.

“Felix,” Dimitri whispers. The monsters in the moonlit shadows on the wall howl with laughter. “Felix. Felix.” Sylvain died in Felix’s arms. Felix and Sylvain, who have stayed by Dimitri, who have been his sword and his shield, who have died for nothing – corpses both, at the feet of Dimitri’s revenge.

Had he turned his gaze to Fhirdiad—had he left Enbarr behind—

Dimitri screams, and screams, and screams.

* * *

Mercedes has been awake since the faint light of dawn. She’s found it difficult to sleep this past month and a half, Sylvain and Felix’s absence haunting her like a ghost whenever she lies down to rest. 

Annette and Ashe sometimes creep into her room at night, both together and alone, to tuck themselves into bed beside her. She strokes their hair when they cry into her nightshirt, whispers things like _we’ll find them_ and _they’ll be just fine_ even though she herself isn’t sure she believes them anymore.

Last night, both Annette and Ashe curled up beside her, and she’s careful not to disturb them as she disentangles herself from the covers and slips from the bed. Their faces are lined with dark circles and tear tracks, and Mercedes’s heart aches in her chest.

 _Goddess,_ she whispers in her mind, faint and sad, _if you cannot send them back to us, please… at least send proof of their deaths._ It’s what’s killing everyone the most – the not knowing, the hope and the hopelessness warring in their hearts with each passing day. Mercedes doesn’t know how much longer she can cling to the composure that allows her to be such a comforting shoulder to cry on.

She wraps herself in a fur-lined robe and slides her feet into her boots, not bothering to get dressed. The scouts are due back mid-morning, and she hates how sure she is that they will bring nothing new. She hopes that a walk around the monastery grounds will settle her mind and her heart enough that her friends – _the ones you have left,_ a soft voice full of heartache murmurs in her mind – will not be able to tell how much she is struggling.

The training grounds are silent as she passes them by. The massive doors are cracked open, and she peers onto the sand-covered pitch with a hollow ache in her lungs. She can almost see it—

_—“You need to learn to defend yourself without magic,” Felix scoffs at her, shoving a training sword into her hands and adjusting her grip on it when she falters. “We can’t have you dying just because you never learned how to use a real weapon.”_

_“I’ve seen you use magic as a real weapon,” Mercedes tells him peaceably, letting him shift her fingers around on the hilt and refraining from mentioning that Dimitri once tried to teach her swordplay, years and years ago. Dimitri is a wound of Felix’s that Mercedes knows she cannot fix._

_“Shut up,” he mutters, and Mercedes giggles at the light flush on his cheeks. “It’s just—if you end up dead and I could have stopped it by teaching you to hold a sword properly, I’d… be cross with you.”_

_“Of course, Felix,” Mercedes says. When Felix releases her hands, she assumes a stance that she knows is incorrect. “Like this?”_

_“Are you thick?” Felix demands, but there’s no heat in it. “Move your feet like this.”_

_He busies himself with correcting her footwork, and she smiles and lets him. The close call last battle had truly frightened him – if Dedue hadn’t gotten to Mercedes in time, she likely would have ended up skewered on the end of a bandit’s lance. If Felix finds comfort in training Mercedes, she’ll drag it out for as long as she’s able—_

—but Felix isn’t here. The pitch is empty and silent. The training swords are on the rack, untouched.

Letting out a shuddering breath, Mercedes moves on.

She passes no one but a few nuns and monks, who take one look at her solemn face and leave her be with a respectful nod. Her mind is troubled, distracted, and she hardly notices where she’s walked until she lifts her head and is greeted with the wooden structures of the stable, dusted with snow.

Sylvain spent a lot of time here. He never liked to leave too much of his horse’s care to the grooms, claiming that a creature that carried him into battle deserved as much of his undivided attention as possible. If she went inside, the second stall on the right would have a gentle gelding named Chamomile in it—

_—“He’s the best horse for a beginner!” Sylvain tells Mercedes cheerfully, patting the horse’s dappled flank. “I know you know the basics, but riding a horse into battle is a whole different animal!”_

_“Plenty of our troops aren’t cavalry,” Mercedes says, though she does offer her hand to Chamomile. The horse nudges her palm with his nose, and she obliges him with a few light scratches._

_“My lovely Mercedes,” Sylvain says, placing his hand on his chest as if wounded. “Are you saying you don’t want to learn how to ride? Even if it means riding into battle beside yours truly?”_

_Mercedes giggles at his theatrics. “If you want to keep a better eye on the foot soldiers, don’t you think slowing down would be easier, not teaching all of us how to ride a warhorse?”_

_”Ah, you caught me,” Sylvain says with an easy smile. He glances at his feet, smile faltering, his fingers running absently across Chamomile’s short, thick fur. “I’d be furious with myself if something happened to any of you because I pulled too far ahead.”_

_“We worry about you, too,” Mercedes says, shifting her hand from Chamomile’s nose to Sylvain’s shoulder. Sylvain startles at the touch, but he relaxes quickly, even leaning into it a little. “Let’s all agree to take better care of ourselves, okay?”—_

—but Sylvain wouldn’t be there. Mercedes folds her hands against her chest as she listens to the soft whickers and snorts of the horses in the stables, almost able to imagine the sound of Sylvain cooing at his stallion.

“Please,” she whispers, the plea becoming a puff of fog in the chilly morning air. _Please. One way or another, on their feet or in their coffins. Please. Send them home._

* * *

Brionne says Pavel is _too soft_ for the interrogation room.

At first, he resented the accusation. He turned against king and country to support the Empire’s efforts, all in pursuit of a quicker end to the war. Any loyalty that remains for Faerghus and her nobility is crushed beneath the weight of his treason. A soft man could not do the things that Pavel has done.

The longer they keep the heirs to Fraldarius and Gautier, however, the more Pavel admits that Brionne is probably right. It’s not that they’re nobility from Pavel’s mother country. It’s not even that he worked under the Gautier’s command, though that’s probably part of it. It’s just—

They’re so _young._

Pavel is well into his thirties, now. Hardly an old man, but not as young as he used to be, and certainly not as young as the men in the cell below him. Twenty-four and twenty-two, if he remembers correctly. Not children. Not boys. But—they’re so young, and they’ve suffered so much for their country, for their prince, for their fathers’ sins.

It thrums in the back of Pavel’s skull, every time he descends into their pit of a dungeon to bring them food and water. In the damp darkness of their cell, they huddle together like mice in the cold. Gautier’s eyes, which once regarded Pavel with respect and admiration, glint with unreserved hatred as Pavel slides the tray through the gap under the door. There’s blood smeared in a trail from the old, rotting mattress to the chamber pot in the corner. They’re barely clinging on to the dignity of pissing someplace other than where they sleep.

The shame. The indignity. What these people have done, what _Pavel_ has done, has reduced these proud, strong men to the creatures shivering in this cell. It sits uncomfortably in the pit of Pavel’s stomach like bad meat. 

Removing Gautier and Fraldarius from the picture and wringing out whatever information they can in the process has struck a blow the Kingdom is unlikely to recover from. They’ll have to surrender. This is the right thing to do. For Faerghus. For Fódlan.

“You’ll burn,” Gautier hisses as Pavel stands. “I’ll be waiting for you there, you know. And I’ll make you suffer in the next life for what you did in this one.”

Pavel doesn’t answer.

“Sylvain,” comes the faint voice of the Fraldarius. Pavel can’t help but wince a little at how hoarse the man is from screaming. Turner’s hatred for the nobility of Faerghus is something Pavel can understand, at least a little – he grew up on the same cold, barren fields as Turner, and sometimes it’s easier to blame people rather than circumstance – but what Turner’s been doing to Fraldarius is beyond cruelty.

“I’m here,” Gautier soothes, his tone a world away from the way he spoke to Pavel. Pavel hurries down the hallway, unable to listen.

“How are our guests doing?” Turner asks as Pavel ascends the stairs to the rest of their hideout. It’s a shithole, is what it is – all crumbling stone and rotting woodwork. An old fort forgotten not just by the Empire, but the Goddess herself. Pavel shrugs as he and Turner walk together down the dimly-torchlit hallway.

“Still alive,” Pavel says neutrally. “Looks like they’ll stay that way for awhile yet.”

“Good. Dorset’s been bitching about how hard we work him,” Turner scoffs as they round the corner to the room they’ve been sleeping in. Dorset, who’s on a bedroll tucked into a corner, offers Turner a rude gesture with his hand, to which Turner makes an equally rude noise. “Look, we signed you on because you can use white magic! Don’t complain about doing your job!”

“I can complain all I want when you’re making me fix your own dumb mistakes, not just battlefield injuries,” Dorset says, not looking up from his book. “Organs are hard to fix, you know. I know you hate the Fraldarius’s guts, but you don’t have to take it literally.”

Brionne barks a laugh as she takes a swig of the flask she’s always got on her hip. “You’re funny, Dorset.”

Pavel shuffles across the old war-room-turned-campsite to where he’s laid his own bedroll. He’s bedding down next to Turner, mostly because Turner’s the only other Kingdom native and Pavel still doesn’t trust the Adrestian folks as far as he can throw them.

“I used to run with a band in the Kingdom,” Turner says conversationally as Pavel drops into a sitting position. “S’how I realized how fucked the nobility really is in that country.”

“Oh?” Pavel says politely. Growing up in a village on the fringes of Galatea territory, he’s seen plenty of bandits. Poor land means more thieves means more violence. Pavel became a soldier to protect what little yield his village’s barren fields produced. Such is the Faerghus way.

“Mmhm. Led by the old heir of Gautier, if you can believe that!” Turner laughs, rough and ugly. “That poor bastard’s daddy dropped him in a heartbeat because he had the gall to be born Crestless. Faerghus nobles don’t even care about flesh and blood, you know that?”

Pavel remembers hearing about the Gautier house disowning their eldest, and then later that the disgraced heir of Gautier had died just as ignominiously as he’d lived. Nothing that had affected his own life much. “Right shame,” he says, because Turner just likes to hear himself talk.

“Can’t help but feel sorry for the little Gautier now, you know,” Turner continues. “I mean, I hate the bastard, but I pity whatever pathetic sod ends up with a daddy like that.” His face turns stormy. “The Fraldarius, though. _The Shield of Faerghus,”_ Turner says mockingly. “What rot.”

Pavel closes his eyes and sighs. This, at least, he understands. What little is left of loyal Faerghus, rallying behind a delusional prince to storm the Empire instead of helping its own people. “Not shielding much of anything, are they.”

“Following that Prince around like that’s gonna help the poor idiots like me who’re dying in the streets of Fhirdiad,” Turner spits. “That brat deserves to suffer. Teach him and his useless daddy a lesson.”

“Mm,” Pavel says, noncommittal. Turner seems to have burnt himself out, at least; he’s grumbling and rustling around in his bag for his rations.

This is the right thing to do for Faerghus and for Fódlan. The suffering of two men means little in the face of an entire country’s suffering, an entire _continent’s_ suffering. The end of the war may come on the backs of the agony and the deaths of men Pavel once called his allies, but it will come.

So why does Pavel feel so sick? Why do the hatred in Gautier’s eyes and the dying flame of Fraldarius’s defiance make Pavel’s stomach churn? It’s been nearly a month now. Pavel’s resolve had started to waver in earnest after his conversation with Gautier, and it wavers more with every passing day.

All this suffering, and what do they have to show for it? For people like Turner and Pell, the act of causing it is enough of a reward, and any information they gain from it is secondary. But Pavel’s never thought himself that kind of man, and at this rate they’re more likely to kill their captives than get anything useful from them.

Turner is a lot of things, but a fool isn’t one of them. He chose their hiding place well; it’s been decades since this rundown fort has been marked on any map. The Kingdom army would have to dedicate significant resources to searching if they wanted to bring Gautier and Fraldarius home alive, and even then, this fort is nestled so far in the mountains that there there’s no guarantee they’d find it. 

“Deep in thought?” Turner asks him, and he laughs when Pavel jolts. “You’re a jumpy bastard.”

“Being militia since you were twelve does that to you,” Pavel mutters.

“I was just thinking,” Turner says, tapping the piece of jerky he’s holding against his thigh, “that we need to run into town for more rations soon. Huh.” He tilts his head, eyeing Pavel with a sly look. “Wonder how Poppa Fraldarius reacted when he saw our little gift to him. I hope he’s thinking about how well we’re looking after his son.”

The finger. Pavel remembers. There was no point in sending it – they weren’t asking for ransom, nor sending proof of life. It was an act of pure cruelty, driven by a desire to cause suffering for the sake of suffering.

The smile twisting Turner’s features is the least human expression Pavel has ever seen on a man before. It hits him fully, then, the depth of the depravity to which he’s doomed two men he respects. This isn’t just an impersonal consequence of war, just the exchange of pain for information. He bears little love for the nobility of his country, but what’s happening here is—it’s inhuman.

“I hope so too,” Pavel says weakly, and he knows in that moment that he can’t bear the weight of the pain he’s caused any longer.

* * *

There’s a commotion outside the reception hall.

Byleth untangles themself from their chair and is on their way to the door before Ingrid has even found her feet. She hurries after Byleth, and when the two of them throw the double doors open, they’re met with a small crowd surrounding two figures.

The rest of the Blue Lions are near the front of the loose circle, save for Dimitri, who is nowhere to be found. Annette has Mercedes’s hand in a white-knuckled grip; Ashe and Dedue stand side-by-side with matching expressions of stone-cold fury. The Gatekeeper is one of the figures in the middle, and he seeks out Byleth when the door opens.

“He was at the monastery gates,” the Gatekeeper tells Byleth, gripping the upper arm of a man with bound wrists and a lowered head. “He told me he had information. I… I think you need to hear it.”

The man in the Gatekeeper’s grasp lifts his head. “Hello,” he says wryly.

“Pavel,” Byleth replies, cold and flinty. “Why have you returned?”

Pavel takes a deep breath. “The heirs to Gautier and Fraldarius. I will tell you where they are,” he says, all false levity gone from his shaking voice. “All I ask in return is that my death be swift.”

* * *

The traitor’s blood is cooling on Dimitri’s hands as he follows the Professor from the monastery.

“He should have suffered,” Patricia hisses. “He deserved to suffer. He took what was yours.”

Pavel was a traitor. Scum. An Imperial rat undeserving of mercy. But the satisfaction Dimitri would gain from Pavel’s suffering means little in the face of the satisfaction he will gain from having that which is his back in his arms.

“He traded information for a painless death,” Dimitri mutters to his stepmother. “I saw no reason to break that oath.”

“Weak.” Glenn crosses his arms and scoffs. “You just don’t want to upset your little Professor. Your resolve is _weak.”_

“Will you not avenge us?” Lambert pleads. “Will you not turn your gaze to Enbarr?”

“Foolish venture. A foolish venture by a foolish boy.” Patricia paces as Dimitri follows the Professor. “Still so soft, even after all these years!”

But Dimitri’s been haunted by much more than her and the others, these past two months. He wakes in the mornings to Felix and Sylvain’s corpses beside him in bed; he feels their absence like he felt his missing eye when it was first ripped from his skull. The ghosts still shriek and cry, but for the first time in what feels like an eternity, he’s found something more important than listening.

Even if all he finds are their bodies, he will bring Sylvain and Felix home.

“Your Highness,” Dedue speaks softly by his side. “We know not what dangers we may face ahead. Please allow me to walk by your side.”

Two months ago, Dimitri would have snarled and stalked away. Two months ago, Dimitri wouldn’t have cared whether he lived or died, as long as it was in the pursuit of his revenge. But to die without touching Felix’s face, to die without cradling Sylvain’s cheek in his hand, even if it’s only one more time – it seems beyond comprehension now.

“Do not get too close,” Dimitri grunts. And perhaps it his imagination, but Patricia, and Lambert, and Glenn – they all seem to go quiet, as Dedue falls into step at Dimitri’s side. Not silent, no. But muffled. Less clear. As if Dimitri could loosen his focus just a little, and he would no longer understand the words they were saying.

Dedue’s presence is steady, almost comforting, as they march after the Professor. 

The directions Pavel has given them lead them through a winding mountain path on the fringes of Imperial territory. The road is in severe disrepair, though Dimitri occasionally notices some of the foliage is crushed beneath what must have been a wagon’s wheel. It’s nowhere he was even close to looking, and the realization that he would likely never have found this place in time without the traitor’s help sets his blood boiling.

“Peace, Highness,” Dedue murmurs, and Dimitri jerks his head up to look at him. Dedue’s eyes are calm, though lined with tension and grief. Slowly, deliberately, Dedue lays a hand on Dimitri’s shoulder, and only then does Dimitri realize how stiff he is, shoulders bunched up almost around his ears.

“These rats will pay for what they have done,” Dimitri mutters. “This I swear.”

Not because his ghosts demand it. Not because it is the wish of the dead. But because it is _Dimitri’s_ wish – to find _his_ Felix, _his_ Sylvain. To bring them back alive, and if not, then to avenge them with his own two hands. 

As the group crests a small hill, Dimitri’s eyes fall upon their destination. Tucked beneath the branches of an old copse of thick evergreens is a crumbling fortress. Vines have begun to crawl into the cracks of its stones, and the rotting door hangs loose off its hinges. Ignoring the Professor’s pleas to wait, Dimitri stalks forward with a single-minded focus, quiet in the controlled manner of a predator as he nudges the door open.

There’s a man sitting in the inside hallway, book in his lap, looking profoundly bored; if he’s the watchman, he’s doing a spectacularly bad job of it. No matter. Dimitri is upon him before he can scream, his lance piercing the man’s throat. The man chokes and gurgles, eyes wide with terror and then blank with death before his body even slumps to the ground.

Pathetic. Rats, all of them – scurrying things with more savagery than sense. Dimitri wrenches his lance from the man’s limp body and ignores the frantic, whispered calls of the Professor as he stalks deeper into the rats’ nest.

“Shit! What the hell?!” A woman surges to her feet in what seems to be the living quarters of the fortress, with bedrolls and rations scattered about. She fumbles for a spear that’s leaning against the wall, but Dimitri descends upon her before she can get a firm enough grip to defend herself. Three other men die as quickly and ingloriously as she does, cleft into pieces by Areadbhar’s fierce swings. 

Their blood is warm where it splatters across Dimitri’s face and hair. They took what is his, and now they are corpses cooling on the floor of their wretched den, as it should be.

“Holy shit,” a voice comes from the door. Dimitri lurches around to turn his gaze to the newcomer. “The fucking Prince of Faerghus himself, coming to save his little lapdogs.”

The man’s scarred lip twists in disgust. He’s as tall as Dimitri and twice as broad, a mace clutched in one meaty fist, but Dimitri only sees a beast in human skin.

“You will die for what you did to them,” Dimitri says, deathly calm.

Grip tightening on his weapon, the man sneers. “No worse than dying on the streets of Fhirdiad because loyal Faerghus left us to rot.”

The words mean little to Dimitri, though he has a notion in the back of his mind that perhaps they should. Instead, he sees a finger, a lock of hair, the nightmare visions of Sylvain and Felix crawling into bed with him at night, and he lunges for the man.

The fight is brutally short. Dimitri’s has Areadbhar sheathed in the man’s chest before the man can do anything but cry out. As much as Dimitri would like to see the man suffer for the crimes he’s committed, Felix and Sylvain are more important than the brief satisfaction of revenge.

Corpses litter the room in chunks. The air is heavy and silent, stinking of fear and blood. Dimitri lowers Areadbhar, watching the man’s body slide off its end with a wet thud. His eyes stare at nothing, and his lips are parted around one last noise of pain, blood trickling from the corners of his mouth.

Dimitri snorts in disgust, at both the man and himself. “With every kill, more monstrous,” he mutters, shaking a few lingering bits of gore off of the end of his lance and preparing to search for what these men took from him.

A rustle.

Dimitri whips around. One last rat is trying to escape, but his foot has caught one of the bedrolls and dragged it across the stones.

“Fuck,” the man whispers hoarsely. He’s a weaselly little thing, limp black hair and an unkind face, and Dimitri immediately fixes him with a glare.

“Where are they,” Dimitri demands in a low growl. He cannot waste time searching every corner of this filthy nest.

The man lets out a high-pitched, disbelieving laugh. “You think I’ll tell you?” He gestures at the carnage surrounding them. “After what you just did?”

“Tell me, and I will make your death swift,” Dimitri hisses, prowling towards the man. The man scrambles backwards until he’s flat against the wall, cursing when he realizes he’s cornered himself. Dimitri grabs a handful of his hair and wrenches it backwards. “Where. Are. They.”

The man’s eyes, bright with the feverish abandon of a man about to die, flicker towards the massacre behind Dimitri and then back to Dimitri’s eyes. “Your little fucktoys are in the basement,” the man says, a mocking smirk curving up the edge of his mouth. “Damaged goods, now. Not sure they’ll be able to _serve_ the _prince_ like they should anymore.”

“Which door?” Dimitri digs the sharp claws of his gauntlets into the man’s hair.

Huffing out a manic laugh, the man continues. “Afraid they won’t be much good to you when you find them. I fucked the little Shield’s mouth til he cried.” His teeth are bared in a vicious mockery of a smile. “Told him it would be the Gautier next if he wasn’t good to me. Came all over his face, and he _thanked_ me for it.”

Felix, forced to submit to this beast’s disgusting whims—Felix, spitting out false gratitude for the treatment to protect Sylvain—Felix and Sylvain both at the mercy of the creature grinning at Dimitri—

Dimitri _roars._

His hand plunges between the man’s legs, grips, and _tears._ The howl of agony isn’t enough to satisfy the desperation for vengeance crashing through Dimitri.

“I will crush your ribs and tear you limb from limb!” he snarls. “I will scatter your flesh and your bones farther than even the Goddess can see!” 

The creature struggles in his grip, wailing like the disgusting animal he is. Dimitri takes the piece of flesh and shoves it into the screaming cavern of the beast’s mouth.

“How does it taste?” Dimitri hisses, watching the tears stream from the man’s eyes, watching the blood dribble from the corners of his lips. The organ this beast had forced Felix to worship is now just a bloody lump of flesh and fabric on his tongue.

Felix. Sylvain.

There is no time to waste on this rat. Dimitri snarls, shifting his free hand to the man’s throat and squeezing. “My only wish is that I could have made you suffer _more.”_

And with a twist and a jerk, the creature’s head is separated from his shoulders.

Hand still clutching the man’s severed head by the hair, Dimitri abandons the headless body to search for the basement.

* * *

The first thing that hits Ingrid is the stench.

She and the Professor had been the only ones brave enough to follow Dimitri into the building, and even then, they both kept their distance as he exacted his revenge. The stairs Dimitri descended moments prior lead into a dark pit that stinks of blood and piss and neglect. She covers her nose with her hand as she hurries down the steps, pausing just a moment to let her eyes adjust to the dim, flickering torchlight.

She’s never been in a place with such an oppressive atmosphere of despair.

The trail of Dimitri’s cape is visible through the broken door of one of the cells farther down the hall, as well as a lump that Ingrid recognizes after a moment as a severed head. 

“Your Highness,” she calls softly when she’s a few feet away from him. She waits for his grunt of acknowledgement before stepping closer and peering into the cell.

Hunched against Dimitri’s kneeling form, just visible over the slope of his shoulders, are two familiar heads of hair.

Ingrid’s heart leaps. “Dimitri,” she whispers, voice cracking, all notions of propriety gone as she collapses to her knees beside Dimitri to lay her eyes upon Sylvain and Felix for the first time in two months.

They look terrible. Corpselike. The gaunt lines of their faces, their unkempt hair, the blood and dirt and bruises all come together to make a pathetic, heartbreaking sight, but their backs rise and fall with shallow, uneven breaths, and they’re alive, they’re alive, and they’re the most beautiful people Ingrid has ever seen.

“Dima,” Felix gasps hoarsely. “Ingrid…”

“We’re here,” Ingrid whispers through her tears, reaching a shaking hand out to touch the short, matted hairs on the back of Felix’s head. “We’re both here. Oh, Felix… Sylvain…”

“You both came,” Sylvain chokes. He’s clinging to Dimitri, but he pries one hand free to reach for Ingrid. She takes it in both of her own and brings it to her mouth to kiss it, uncaring of the grime and blood on his knuckles.

“Of course we did.” Her voice is wet, breaking, and she wants to close her eyes against the overwhelming feelings but cannot bear to remove them from Sylvain and Felix. “We never stopped looking—” Her voice cracks in half on a sob.

“Everyone who hurt you is dead,” Dimitri says, low and dangerous, protective. “I…” He spares a glance at Ingrid, and her heart leaps when he continues to speak. _“We_ will bring you home.”

Felix's cracked, bloody lips twist into a faint smile, and Sylvain laughs, shattered and hoarse and _hopeful._ Ingrid tightens her grip on his hand.

“We’re all going home,” she whispers against his fingers. There are a thousand thoughts darting around in the back of her mind, swarming like ants – _they might still die, this might be the last time you speak to them_ – but she refuses to dwell on them. They’re here, and they’re alive, and Ingrid lets herself cry freely and openly for the first time in two months.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the section beginning "There’s a little brown parcel tied with string in the middle of the war table" contains descriptions of a severed finger (felix's, which was sent to the monastery as a taunt)
> 
> the section beginning "On the rare occasions Dimitri manages to sleep" contains vivid descriptions of hallucinations. dimitri hallucinates felix's dismembered body moving and talking to him; there are graphic descriptions of gore, including missing limbs/eyes. 
> 
> the section beginning "The traitor’s blood is cooling on Dimitri’s hands" is all in dimitri's pov and contains descriptions of vivid, lifelike hallucinations, including his "ghosts" speaking to him. the part of this section that starts with "There’s a man sitting in the inside hallway" contains graphic depictions of violence and dehumanizing language on dimitri's part as he kills the bandits inside the hideout.
> 
> pell graphically describes sexually assaulting felix in the section that begins with "A rustle," and dimitri responds by ripping off pell's genitals and putting them into pell's mouth. he proceeds to decapitate pell. this is all graphically described, so if you need to skip this section - basically, pell does end up telling dimitri where to find sylvain and felix, and dimitri kills him.
> 
> the next section, beginning with "The first thing that hits Ingrid is the stench," has a brief description of a severed head, and has brief descriptions of sylvain and felix's injured, starving bodies.


	3. lay my curses out to rest

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> shows up to the final chapter update five months late with pizza: hi is anyone still here
> 
>  **please note the change in pairing tags.** as of this chapter, this fic is officially romantic dimitri/sylvain/felix, as in a polyamorous ot3. romance is still not at all the main focus of this fic, but it is very much in here!
> 
> finally.... finally the long-awaited comfort for all the hurt i dished out! hopefully it's worth the wait - it ended up almost as long as the first two chapters combined, hehe
> 
> as with before, more detailed cws are in the end notes! take care of yourselves, everyone, and i hope you enjoy the last installment of this fic!

When Dimitri and Ingrid carry two limp forms up the basement steps, Dedue spends a few cold, grief-stricken moments absolutely sure that they’ve arrived too late and found nothing but corpses.

But Ingrid demands, “Where’s Mercedes?” and the bundle gathered against Dimitri’s bloody chest lets out a whimper, and a coil of tension that’s lived in Dedue’s chest for months comes unwound.

“Bring them outside,” Mercedes says from somewhere behind Dedue, voice soft but unwavering. “It won’t do to treat them in conditions like these.” The floor of the fort is filthy and covered in fresh blood and corpses besides, and Dedue hurries out the broken front door after a single-minded Dimitri.

It takes some doing to convince Dimitri to place his precious burden onto the ground, but even in this state, Dimitri struggles to argue with Mercedes. He and Ingrid lay what’s left of Sylvain and Felix onto a blanket Mercedes has spread onto the sparse, frostbitten grass.

To Mercedes’ credit, she only lets out a small gasp before she kneels beside their starved, beaten bodies to get to work. Even Dedue can’t stop his lips from parting at the state they’ve found their companions in. Felix’s hair is shorn in the back, uneven and matted in the front; Sylvain’s hair is a shaggy, tangled mess eerily reminiscent of his long-dead brother. Both their faces are gaunt with hunger, eyes sunken and tired with dark bruises beneath them, and their bodies are covered in myriad half-healed wounds.

Mercedes’ lips are pursed as she runs her hands, alit with white magic, across their bodies. “A lot of this damage is too old for me to heal,” she says, a line of tension running through the calmness of her voice. “I’ll do what I can, but they’re too weak to draw from and there’s only so much I can give.”

The theory of faith magic is something Dedue understands, though he never had much talent for it. The magic must draw energy from somewhere to knit flesh and bone back together – either the body it’s healing, or the healer performing the magic. Felix and Sylvain look a breath away from dying, and Mercedes is just one person.

“Do not exhaust yourself,” Dedue tells her as she closes her eyes and concentrates. She offers him a shallow nod, but says nothing more.

“Are—are they—” Annette starts, but she stops herself, hands folded tightly against her chest. Beside her, Ashe wrings his hands around the hem of his tunic, watery eyes flickering between Sylvain, Felix, and Mercedes.

Mercedes opens her eyes after a few tense, silent minutes. Her face is a few shades paler than it was, and she sways when she sits up. Felix and Sylvain haven’t visibly improved beyond their breathing easing somewhat, which means that the injuries Mercedes prioritized healing were all on the inside. It’s… not a good sign, that they’re still in such bad shape with Mercedes as exhausted as she is, but Dedue forces himself not to dwell.

“I’ve done all I can with magic,” Mercedes says, faint but determined. “Someone get me my kit.”

“Can you treat them in the wagon?” Byleth asks. Their face is impassive, but there’s tension around their eyes and in the way they glance around the forest. “We shouldn’t linger.”

“Annie, sit in the back with me and assist me,” Mercedes says with a nod, all business. She almost loses her balance when she stands, but before Dedue can reach out, Dimitri catches her elbow to steady her. It’s more care Dimitri has shown for an ally in – longer than Dedue cares to think about, but the surprise is quickly forgotten as everyone works to move Sylvain and Felix to the covered wagon for the journey back to the monastery.

“I—I can walk,” Felix mumbles in a barely-coherent protest as Dedue and Ingrid place him as gently as they can onto the wagon’s floor. “Lemme walk.”

“Don’t be stupid—” Ingrid starts to snap.

“Sylvain cannot,” Dedue interrupts her when Felix levels her with a hazy glare. “You would like to stay by his side, would you not?”

Felix shifts his glare to Dedue, who is unintimidated.

“Stay in the wagon. Be with Sylvain,” Dedue tells him softly. “We will be right outside.”

Mercedes and Annette climb in once Sylvain and Felix are settled, and Dedue is unsurprised when Dimitri sits on the back of the wagon. There’s no room for him to sit inside, but he pulls the curtain aside just enough that he can see Sylvain and Felix as they begin the journey home. His lance is gripped in his hand, prepared to defend their small entourage should anyone interfere with their progress.

 _Whatever gods are listening,_ Dedue thinks in quiet, fervent prayer. _Let them survive this._ The heartbreak of finding them only to lose one or both of them – it would be too much to bear.

* * *

Though Mercedes dosed both Sylvain and Felix with a strong painkiller, they drift intermittently in and out of consciousness on the ride back, as if in too much pain to stay unconscious even under the influence of the drug.

There are bits of stone and straw stuck in the sticky red of their wounds, and they shift and whine with every prod and swipe of a damp rag. Dimitri can’t tear his eyes away, body tense as if ready to interfere, as Mercedes and Annette administer what little mundane medical care they can manage.

Even though Sylvain and Felix wake up fairly regularly, they’re rarely coherent, and what few words Dimitri can understand are usually just repetitions of each other’s names. Dimitri’s ghosts aren’t silent, but they’re quiet, as if trying just as hard to listen to Sylvain and Felix as they mutter and cry.

It’s Sylvain’s turn to wake, it seems; Dimitri’s unwavering gaze fixates on him the moment his eyes squint open. “Felix,” Sylvain murmurs, shifting restlessly. His eyes, though half-focused and hazy, dart around in a frantic search. Dimitri’s chest clenches. Sylvain clearly doesn’t remember the last two times he woke and asked after Felix.

“He is here,” Dimitri replies before Mercedes or Annette can try to respond. “He is beside you. The people who hurt you are dead.”

“Dima.” Sylvain’s eyes flutter, like he’s trying desperately to stay awake. “You… killed them?”

“Yes.” Dimitri’s grip tightens on his lance. He can’t quite bring himself to regret the swiftness of their deaths – it brought Sylvain and Felix back to him that much sooner – but some part of him still aches with rage at how painlessly they died.

“Good,” Sylvain whispers on an exhale. His head rolls to the side, and his body visibly relaxes when he sees Felix’s slack face inches from his own.

“Rest,” Dimitri orders him. “I will watch over you.”

Sylvain hums a low, tired note. “Good,” he repeats, his eyes closing again.

“Now that you have taken them back,” Lambert whispers, an unwelcome presence that makes Dimitri jump, “you can turn your gaze to Gronder.”

“Kill the Emperor. Take her head from her shoulders,” Glenn hisses. “Kill her for taking them from you. Kill her!”

Dimitri is silent, even when their demands grow louder and angrier without Sylvain’s voice to focus on. The rats – one of them had mentioned people starving in Fhirdiad. Something inside him, some soft part of him the Tragedy hadn’t managed to kill, aches at the thought of his homeland suffering so. And Gronder – had he pushed on to Gronder, Sylvain and Felix…

His focus sharpens on them once again, and the voices of his ghosts become a muted buzz as he studies their beaten, malnourished forms. Even a week longer, and he would have likely found nothing but corpses. Had he pushed on to Gronder, they would have… Sylvain and Felix would have…

He jerks his head around to stare at the road instead. Nothing had mattered to him but revenge. Everything he loved, he had been prepared to lose. But threatened with the loss of Sylvain and Felix, he…

“Weak!” Patricia is howling. “What a weak, useless boy!”

He…

“Where has your strength gone?” Glenn is lamenting. “You used to be so strong.”

He finds himself weak. But if strength means living in a world without Sylvain and Felix, he no longer minds being weak. Just this once. Just for them.

* * *

Upon their return to the monastery, Dimitri gathers Sylvain and Felix in his arms and carries them to the cathedral, and no one has the courage to stop him.

Oh, they try to convince him otherwise with words. “They need the infirmary!” Annette protests, jogging alongside Dimitri to keep up with his steady, single-minded pace. Ashe tugs on Dimitri’s sleeve and is shaken off with a snarl. Even Ingrid and Dedue cannot deter him.

Mercedes doesn’t even try; she packs up her supplies with a sigh and follows behind Dimitri at a more sedate pace. “I’ll do what I can for them in the cathedral and see if I can change his mind,” she says to Byleth, who is watching with faint distress. “We need to remember that we aren’t just tending their wounds, but Dimitri’s.”

She follows Dimitri to the back of the cathedral and into a small side room he’s made something of a nest out of. He watches her warily, but when all she does is wait in the doorway, he makes a vague noise of approval and lays Sylvain and Felix, very gingerly, onto the mess of blankets on the floor.

Pursing her lips, Mercedes surveys the room. The rubble has been shoved out into the hallway, and the walls and ceiling are intact enough to keep out the elements; a single small window allows a slanted beam of light into the space. The blankets are cleaner than Mercedes would expect, which may mean Dimitri cleans them but more likely means he rarely sleeps here. 

“Dimitri,” she says softly. He jerks his head up to glare at her. “May I please look at them?”

Dimitri’s eye is narrowed. He’s hunched over their bodies almost like an animal, protective and afraid, and Mercedes tries to offer him a comforting smile.

“I know you just want to keep them safe,” she continues gently. “That’s why you brought them here, right? This is the only place you feel safe.”

“I can protect them here.” Dimitri is relaxing by inches, withdrawing just enough to make Felix and Sylvain more accessible to Mercedes.

Mercedes is careful to make her every movement easy to anticipate as she sets her supplies on the ground. “We did what we could for them in the field,” she explains, low and soothing, as she runs her magic across Sylvain’s body, and then Felix’s. There’s little more she can do for them with faith, but it’s the fastest way to see what needs her attention immediately. “But there’s more we can do for them now that we’re back home. These blankets are very clean, Dimitri. That’s a great start.” She smiles at him. “You’re taking very good care of them.”

It’s easy to see why Dimitri brought them back here, if Mercedes looks at the situation through his eyes. He’s desperate, afraid; he’s a man who tried to resign himself to losing everything but could not bear the emotional consequences. She doesn’t know how long he spent in the cathedral before the Professor found him, but she suspects it was the only sanctuary he had for quite some time. Of course he’d take two of his most precious people to the safest place he knows.

But.

She hums as she removes the bandages from Felix’s hand to take another look at the stump of his finger. This is hardly a comfortable or sanitary place to treat people in Sylvain and Felix’s condition; they really do need the infirmary, with supplies and personnel just footsteps away.

“I think,” Mercedes says as she dabs old blood and fresh pus from Felix’s hand, “that we should take these blankets with us to the infirmary to keep them warm.”

“I can’t keep them safe in that wretched building,” Dimitri snaps. Sylvain, still unconscious, makes a faint noise of distress at Dimitri’s ire, and Mercedes watches as Dimitri hunches down and lowers his voice to a hiss. “This is where they will be _safe._ They will not be taken from me again.”

“You can guard them from physical threats here,” Mercedes tells him, keeping her voice even and gentle. “But you can’t protect them from infection.” She lifts Felix’s hand to show Dimitri the stump where his pinky used to be, nestled beside the twisted, broken lumps of his other fingers.

Infection has rooted itself so thoroughly that white magic can’t cleanse it, and the injury is _ugly._ The skin around it is an angry red, and the wound itself is a bloody, half-healed knot of flesh leaking yellow pus. Mercedes knows for a fact that Dimitri isn’t squeamish, but he rears back from the sight of it.

“If you keep them here,” Mercedes continues, lowering Felix’s hand to continue cleaning the injury, “we can’t treat their injuries properly. We can’t watch Felix to make sure his infection is healing. We can’t watch Sylvain for similar symptoms.” She meets Dimitri’s wide-eyed gaze, unafraid and unintimidated. “They will die. You can’t protect them from that.”

It may be a bit of an exaggeration, but Mercedes isn’t going to get anywhere with Dimitri in this state with _maybes_ and _mights._ She needs her patients in the infirmary, where she has supplies and beds and other healers to support her when she needs to rest.

“They… will die,” Dimitri whispers. His gaze drops to Sylvain and Felix, the pain and loss in his face so profound that it nearly snaps Mercedes’ heart in two.

“Only if we leave them here,” she says. She winds fresh bandages around Felix’s hand. “We can do much more for them in the right environment, with the right supplies.”

“Fine,” Dimitri growls, jerkily hauling himself to his feet and beginning to pace the short length of the room. “But I—I must be there.”

“Of course.” Mercedes stands, slow and smooth. “You’ll protect them, won’t you? I’m sure they’ll feel better knowing you’re watching over them.” She moves for the door, just as slow, trying not to startle Dimitri unnecessarily. “Now, take good care of them while I get some stretchers and some help, okay?”

Dimitri is restless and agitated when Mercedes returns with a small contingent of infirmary staff, but he allows them to load Sylvain and Felix onto stretchers to carry them to the infirmary. The room Mercedes set up for them is quiet, a corner room in what’s become an entire wing of hospital beds as the war goes on.

“Would you like to help me bathe them?” she asks Dimitri softly as the infirmary staff lay Sylvain and Felix on the towels she’d laid on the floor. She wants to clean them up more thoroughly and change them into clean, dry clothing before she puts them in their beds, and it may soothe Dimitri to take control of their recovery in this small way. The infirmary staff leave immediately when she waves them off; she’s unwilling to risk Dimitri getting jumpy because there are strangers in the room.

“I…” Dimitri hesitates. He looks young, his face half-hidden behind the pile of blankets he’d taken with him from the cathedral. “I do not want to hurt them.”

“You won’t,” Mercedes encourages him. “Lay those down in the corner. Come help me, Dimitri.”

The sound of his name seems to spur him into action, and he obediently drops the blankets in the corner of the room and drifts to Mercedes’ side. She has soapy buckets of water already prepared, and she dips her hand in to cast a weak fire spell and make sure they’ll be a comfortable temperature for Sylvain and Felix.

Methodical, gentle, Mercedes strips them of their clothing, stopping and shifting her hands whenever she touches a tender enough spot that it makes them cry out in their sleep. Dimitri watches her the whole time, twitching at every noise, but he doesn’t try to stop her.

“Here,” she murmurs once Sylvain and Felix are both naked. She dips her hand into one of the buckets and removes a washrag, wringing it out before handing it to Dimitri. “Watch me.”

Taking her own washrag out, Mercedes dabs at the grime and blood caked onto Felix’s skin. They’d cleaned what they had to in order to treat them in the field, but it was far too cold and their charges far too weak to risk getting them wet unnecessarily. Here, they can make them as clean and comfortable as possible without risking further injury. 

Mercedes glances expectantly between Dimitri and Sylvain.

\--

Dimitri stares at Mercedes, then back down at Sylvain. The washrag is a tiny, wet weight in his unmoving hand.

“We need them to be clean before we can put them in their beds,” Mercedes is saying patiently. Uncertain, halting, Dimitri lowers the rag to Sylvain’s bare chest.

His hands aren’t meant for tasks like this. He is a weapon of war, an instrument of revenge – his hands are for killing. Slowly, fearfully, he wipes the cloth across Sylvain’s skin.

“Good. That’s good,” Mercedes whispers. Sylvain’s skin is pale and taut beneath the grime, but he hasn’t stirred. Hasn’t made a noise of pain. Emboldened, Dimitri passes the cloth across Sylvain’s chest again, more firmly this time.

“Mm…” Sylvain’s voice is muffled, confused, but not pained, and Dimitri watches as Sylvain’s eyes slit open. “Dimitri…?”

“I am here,” Dimitri rasps, his free hand going to Sylvain’s face to cradle his cheek. It’s an unconscious movement, one he doesn’t realize he’s made until Sylvain is nuzzling into his hand, and he freezes – but Sylvain’s cracked lips are curved into a smile, and he presses a kiss to Dimitri’s palm.

“Thank you,” Sylvain whispers hoarsely. “You’ll… take care of him…?”

“Of both of you,” Dimitri corrects. His thumb brushes across Sylvain’s cheekbone, and he marvels at how naturally the gentleness comes when it’s something precious he’s handling.

Sylvain’s head lolls, his eyes sliding shut. “Good,” he murmurs. Dimitri watches, silent, wondering, as Sylvain slips back into unconsciousness still leaning into Dimitri’s touch.

“Dimitri,” Mercedes prompts him gently when Dimitri cannot tear his eyes away from Sylvain’s face. “The floor can’t be comfortable for them. Let’s clean them up quickly so we can put them to bed, alright?”

“…Alright.” Dimitri dips the rag back into the water and keeps cleaning Sylvain, his lips twisting as the cloth reveals what the dirt and blood had hidden. There are two months of suffering painted onto Sylvain’s skin, and when Dimitri turns his head to look, Felix is even worse – there’s a jagged ruthlessness to the wounds split into his body, bruises of all ages blooming on the jutting edges of his skeleton. Dimitri is used to inflicting and witnessing pain, is unflinching in the face of gore, but seeing this sort of cruelty inflicted on the people he loves makes him want to turn his head.

He and Mercedes work in silence, and once Sylvain and Felix are both passably clean, Mercedes rubs salve on their wounds and rebandages them. “Help me put them to bed, will you?” she asks Dimitri, and Dimitri obliges, stooping first to pick up Felix.

It’s like carrying a child. Felix is a tiny, skeletal weight in his arms, and Dimitri finds himself almost unwilling to place him on the mattress. _I can’t let him go,_ his heart howls as he hesitates beside the bed. _I have to hold him—protect him—keep him safe—he’s mine, they’re both mine—_

“Dimitri,” Mercedes says, quiet but firm.

Dimitri places Felix on the bed, watching his face all the while. Felix’s eyes crack open, unfocused amber slits, and his lips twitch – whether it’s disgust, a smile, a frown, Dimitri cannot tell. The noise that Felix makes is little more than a low whine in his throat.

“Lushka,” Dimitri murmurs. The tension in Felix’s face relaxes at the familiar nickname. Dimitri reaches towards Felix’s face with a hesitant hand, and when Felix doesn’t flinch, he lays his palm against Felix’s sallow cheek.

Felix watches him a moment longer before his eyes drift shut. Pulling back, Dimitri grabs the blanket folded to the end of the bed and tucks Felix underneath it.

When he returns to the other bed with Sylvain, he finds that Mercedes has covered Felix with one of Dimitri’s blankets from the cathedral on top of the infirmary sheets. She’s tucking it around Felix’s shoulders, and she offers Dimitri a kind smile as he lays Sylvain on the bed beside Felix’s. As Dimitri is pulling the sheets over Sylvain, she’s already on her way over with another one of Dimitri’s blankets.

“So you can keep them warm and keep them safe,” she says peacefully as she smooths the patterned wool across Sylvain’s narrow chest. Dimitri watches as the geometric figures on the blanket rise and fall with every one of Sylvain’s shallow breaths. 

“Mercedes,” Dedue’s low, familiar voice comes from the door. “If you have a moment, I would like to speak to you regarding the treatment for their malnourishment.”

Mercedes hums an agreement and gives Dimitri’s hand a pat. “I’ll be just outside if you need me, okay?”

Dimitri doesn’t answer. Her footsteps exit the room, but they stop outside the door; her voice is a low murmur as she talks to Dedue in the hall. He moves to the wall and watches Sylvain and Felix breathe.

* * *

Felix wakes by inches.

The sensations surrounding him are – confusing. He’s warm, uncomfortably so, and the surface beneath him is strangely soft. Even when he wakes atop Sylvain, there’s little left of either of them to make the position warm _or_ soft. He twitches his fingers. Not wool, not straw, not rock – not bone or cold, ashy skin. His thoughts are slow and foggy, and trying to sweep his awareness down his body is like trying to wade through the thick mud of a bog. Warmth, softness. No skin. No hands, no—

Sylvain.

His breath jerks into his lungs in a painful gasp, and he pries his sticky eyes open, frantically scanning his surroundings. A wooden ceiling, soft sunlight in slanting beams, a bed, and—there! There, to the right, a flash of red. Gritting his teeth, Felix turns his head, his muscles stiff and screaming. But there. He’s there, shaggy red hair splayed across a pillow, face unconscious and limp. Desperate, afraid, Felix watches Sylvain’s chest beneath the blanket, only able to breathe again himself when he sees it rise and fall.

Felix opens his mouth, cracked lips tearing apart, but no sound leaves his throat. _Sylvain,_ he wants to call. Wants to reach a hand across the gap between their beds, tuck himself against Sylvain’s side, wrap his arms around him so he’ll _know_ when they take him next.

“Felix,” a voice comes from his left.

Felix freezes, but – it isn’t Pell’s voice, or Turner’s. It’s not an unfamiliar one, though, and his breath catches when a head of blond hair ducks into his vision as Dimitri kneels beside his bed.

“You are safe,” Dimitri tells him, a tenderness in his voice and face that Felix hasn’t seen in years. “We are at the monastery. I will kill anyone who tries to harm either of you.”

“D…” The sound is little more than a tap of the tongue against the roof of Felix’s mouth, and the rest of Dimitri’s name is lost on a weak exhale. But the tension racking Felix’s muscles drains away as Dimitri touches his fingers to Felix’s face and, very slowly, very gently, strokes his cheekbone.

“I am here,” Dimitri says quietly. There’s still a wildness in his eye that Felix recognizes, but it’s tempered by something softer, something loving. Pain drags the corners of Dimitri’s mouth down as he continues, “I am sorry I did not reach you sooner.”

 _Sorry._ How long has it been since Felix has heard Dimitri _apologize?_ Where is the beast who thought of nothing but ghosts and vengeance, who would have gladly stepped over Felix’s corpse to storm Enbarr? This is—this is someone so much more like the Dimitri Felix used to know, and Felix has the brief, hysterical thought that he’s died, and this is just a vision sent by the Goddess to ease his passing.

But his whole body _aches._ His hands and feet are burning focal points of pain, only muted slightly by the fogginess Felix now recognizes as a painkilling ether. Dimitri’s face is still gaunt, his eyes heavy with exhaustion, and Sylvain looks like a corpse still breathing.

“Hhh… hurts,” he manages to wheeze.

Dimitri’s shoulders hunch as if the admittance is a physical weight on him. “They… re-broke your fingers and your toes to set them properly,” he tells Felix. “You would never be able to walk again otherwise. Or write, or… or hold a sword.” It’s not like him to speak so hesitantly, and against Felix’s face, Dimitri’s fingers flex. “Felix,” Dimitri says, helplessly.

There are so many things Felix wants to say to the damn boar right now. _You saved us. You should have come sooner. This is your fault. This isn’t your fault. You should have done something. You couldn’t have done anything._ The thoughts tumble around each other, whirling and indistinct like a riverbed disturbed.

“Dimitri,” comes a soft voice, and it takes Felix only a moment to recognize it’s Mercedes who’s talking. “You should let Felix rest.”

“Of course,” Dimitri mutters, but his hand remains against Felix’s cheek for a moment longer before it withdraws.

Felix wants to turn his head to keep Dimitri in his line of vision, but he’s exhausted and aching, his body a clumsy vessel for a mind barely conscious. In his sight, Sylvain breathes, alive and under Dimitri’s protection.

Safe. They’re safe.

Eyes stinging, Felix furiously blinks. Safe. How long—how long? _Safe_ hasn’t meant anything to him for how long? The pain still hasn’t ended, but the danger has. If Dimitri says they’re safe, then Felix is damn sure that everyone in that pit is long since dead. He can sleep here, and he can know that he and Sylvain will both be alive come morning.

The tears slide from his eyes despite his effort to contain them, and he slips back into unconsciousness hating the warm wetness on his face.

* * *

“Hungry,” Sylvain whispers pleadingly.

Dedue shakes his head, pulling the empty bowl out of Sylvain’s weak, grasping fingers. “You must not,” he says, gentle and firm. “You will make yourself ill.”

Sylvain’s face crumples, and Dedue’s chest tightens at the raw desperation. He’s glad His Highness is asleep – he doubts Dimitri would be able to deny Sylvain, no matter how many times Dedue has told him it’s for the best. “Please,” Sylvain whimpers, and though it’s almost a physical pain to do so, Dedue again shakes his head.

“Your body has gone without for too long,” he explains, setting the bowl aside and smoothing his hand across the distressed lines of Sylvain’s forehead. It’s nothing Sylvain can fully understand – Dedue certainly wasn’t able to, no matter how many times his saviors from Duscur explained it to him, until he had recovered more of his senses. Still, Sylvain’s expression shifts to something more resigned, and he goes limp against the bed. Beside him, Felix whines and turns in his sleep, but does not wake.

“He’s hungry,” Ingrid says, voice tight and accusatory. “Look how skinny he is. You’re really not letting him have any more?”

“Do you think me cruel?” Dedue asks her, deliberately mild, taking the bowl and standing. When he leaves the room, Ingrid follows, though neither of them closes the door behind them. “So heartless as to do this simply to make them suffer?”

Ingrid’s mouth opens, and some part of Dedue expects her to fight him on this. Her anger has no place to go but the man in front of her, and though she’s made efforts to reconcile her views of Duscur, prejudiced ways of thinking are especially insidious in the midst of fear.

But she takes a deep breath. Her shoulders slump. “I apologize, Dedue,” she whispers. “Your people… they brought you back from a similar state, did they not?”

“They did.” Dedue does not particularly like to remember the state he was in after his long imprisonment in Fhirdiad. His old scars ache as he sees his old pain reflected on Sylvain and Felix’s bodies.

Ingrid nods, eyes downcast. “Forgive me. I have had years to grow past my prejudices. It is… cruel of me to speak to you so.”

“It is.” Dedue refuses to comfort her, but he will not cause her unnecessary pain, either. He is silent as he places the bowl on the tray beside Felix’s dishes and the leftover soup.

“I trust you,” Ingrid says, sudden and unexpected. “I… I need you to know that…” She takes a deep, wavering breath. “You… you are one of our most valued allies, Dedue.”

He tilts his head. He’s heard this before – that he is not like the rest of his people, that he is the one good thing to come from a country full of kingslayers.

“You and the people of Duscur,” she continues, soft, trembling. “The people of Faerghus are wrong to treat you so.”

“They are,” Dedue agrees quietly. His people, driven to death and exile, living in sunless places with fear in their hearts – no person deserves to live like that. His anger has quieted over the years, but it has never left him.

“I… I am sorry. I don’t know what’s come over me,” Ingrid says, and when Dedue turns to look at her, she’s wiping tears from her eyes with the backs of her hands. “You… you worked so hard to bring them back to us. To. To bring back the lynchpins of a country that hates your people just for existing.” She turns watery green eyes to him, red at their corners. “You are a good man, Dedue. And so are your people.”

“You cannot judge a people by the actions of one,” he says, eyeing her thoughtfully.

“No. But I cannot judge a people by the actions of a few, either.” She stands, and to Dedue’s surprise, she bows at the waist – a deep gesture of respect, or of contrition. “I never apologized properly for my behavior,” she says, hair tumbling down to hide her tearstained face. “And in the face of all you’ve done for me, it—it seems so unworthy. But. But.” A sniffle, and a hand wiping beneath her nose. “I’m sorry. I—I’m so sorry, for the way I thought of you and Duscur. I’m sorry.”

“It is not my place to forgive you on behalf of my people.” He turns to face her fully. “When you become a knight of Blaiddyd… apologize to me then.” He lets his lips quirk up, just slightly, when Ingrid lifts her head to look at him. “Show us through your actions that you wish for our forgiveness.”

Ingrid’s expression shifts, resolute – presented with a challenge, and one she’ll enjoy living up to. “I understand,” she says, straightening. 

“Good.” Dedue pats her bicep gently. “Now. You need your rest as much as they do.”

“I—” Ingrid’s lips purse. She’s barely slept since Felix and Sylvain’s return to the monastery, and Dedue doesn’t doubt what little sleep she managed was restless. Her weariness is clearly overtaking her stubbornness. “You’ll stay with them?” she asks instead of protesting.

“Of course,” Dedue tells her. “No harm will come to them as long as I still breathe.”

Ingrid huffs out a tired, humorless laugh. “For all of our sakes,” she says as she picks up the tray with the dishes, “please keep breathing.” She stares for one last, long moment into the infirmary room before she slumps and turns to leave.

Sylvain has fallen back into a troubled sleep by the time Dedue reenters the room, and Felix seems to have calmed from whatever nightmare was plaguing him earlier. The things they suffered are not so easily healed; Dedue remembers the helplessness, the frustration, the way his body betrayed him. It took him years to rebuild the strength he lost in mere months of captivity. 

But they are alive.

He settles into the chair between their beds and watches them breathe. They survived, just as he did. And they will heal, just as he did, in whatever ways they can.

* * *

Though the infirmary staff has offered multiple times to take over Sylvain and Felix’s care on a more full-time basis, Mercedes and the rest of the former Blue Lions all continue to insist on caring for their bedridden members themselves. Dedue cooks all their meals – soup and thinly shredded proteins, lots of water, nothing rich enough to upset their stomachs. Mercedes has heard tales of people returning after months of starvation in the Faerghus tundra, only to die after gorging themselves on too much food too quickly.

As for the more mundane medical tasks like changing bandages and administering salves, Mercedes tries to do as much as she can. On the rare occasions Sylvain and Felix wake, it seems to soothe them to be under the care of a familiar face; whenever Mercedes’ need for rest overcomes her, she calls on Marianne or Linhardt, both of whom Sylvain and Felix at least know in passing. Manuela helps when she can, but she’s often too busy directing the rest of the medical wing to spare the time. Neither Sylvain nor Felix is anywhere near stable enough to be left alone, even for a night.

Mercedes brushes the hair off Sylvain’s feverish forehead, frowning at the crease between his brows.

Felix’s infection is abating, though slowly; his fever drops a little more with every passing day. But it seems as though Sylvain’s body, after holding out for so long to protect Felix, has nothing left to fight the illness growing inside it.

“Shh, shh,” she murmurs when Sylvain whines. She dips her hand into the bucket on his bedside table to retrieve one of the cloths inside, and she lays the wet fabric across his forehead.

His eyes crack open, two bleary slits barely focusing on her face. “Mom?” he croaks.

Mercedes’s heart cracks in two.

“I’m here, honey,” she whispers.

“Don’t feel good.” Sylvain tries to shake his head, and Mercedes catches the cloth before he can dislodge it.

“I know.” She pats the cloth against his hot, sweaty forehead. His expression is still tense and pained, but she hopes it’s bringing him at least a little bit of relief. 

“How are they doing?” Annette asks from the door, her voice small.

Letting out a noncommittal hum, Mercedes leans back. “Felix is going to survive, I believe, though I’m unsure in what condition,” she replies, just as quiet. “Sylvain is…” She watches with her lower lip between her teeth as Sylvain’s hands flex uncomfortably against the bedspread. “I… I’m doing everything I can.”

“I know you are,” Annette says, tiptoeing into the room. “You’re the best there is, Mercie.”

Mercedes lowers her head. “He’s in pain,” she whispers. “They both are.”

“But they’re alive,” Annette says, though her voice is rough with tears. “We… we saved them, Mercie. _You_ saved them.” Her hand comes to rest on Mercedes’ shoulder, and Mercedes grips it in one of her own, unable to look away from Sylvain’s sweat-sheened face and Felix’s nightmare-tense sleep. 

How much of them did they save?

With Dedue’s careful meal plan and the medical staff’s treatment, they’re recovering about as well as Mercedes could hope. They’ve both gained weight, though scant, and their wounds are slowly closing. A combination of re-breakage and faith magic has guaranteed they’ll regain at least some mobility in their fingers.

But how much of them was left by the time Dimitri pulled them from that cell? How much was left to save?

She tightens her grip on Annette’s hand and centers herself. Whatever is left of them, it’s enough. Whatever jagged edges and missing pieces they have now – they’re alive, and they’re enough.

* * *

Felix looks so small.

Rodrigue brushes his knuckles across Felix’s forehead, frowning at the heat radiating from his skin. The gaunt lines of his face, the new scars scattered across his skin, the deep bags beneath his sunken eyes – two months of starvation and mistreatment have left his son a living corpse.

“Felix,” he whispers, voice cracking. The gentle rise and fall of Felix’s narrow chest is all there is to reassure Rodrigue that he hasn’t lost another son.

Felix was always a small child. He used to pout and cry about it, wail at the indignity of it all when Sylvain or Ingrid held something he wanted up out of his reach. Even now, the only friend from his childhood he’s overtaken in height is Ingrid, and only by a scant few inches.

Tears used to come to Felix so easily. Sad tears, happy tears, angry tears. Glenn was always better at handling them than Rodrigue, but sometimes all Felix wanted was his father. Sometimes Felix would tuck his little face into the fur collar of Rodrigue’s cloak and cling and cling and cling, tiny back trembling beneath Rodrigue’s soothing hand, until he sobbed himself to sleep in his father’s arms.

When did he stop trusting his father with his tears?

It’s been years since Rodrigue has seen his son cry. After Glenn, Felix would shut his door tight when he fell to pieces, and Rodrigue would stand outside, uncertain, unwelcome. He’d listen to the sobs tear from Felix, vicious, painful things, and he’d rest his forehead against the wood of the closed door and mourn that any comfort he could offer would be wasted.

Should he have tried?

Rodrigue picks up Felix’s limp left hand, pressing a kiss to the battered, bandaged knuckles. Felix’s wounded right sits swathed in gauze, and it wrenches Rodrigue’s heart to remember what Felix’s severed finger looked like on the war room table.

If that finger were all of him that made it home, would Rodrigue have been able to bear it?

Two sons lost, two more ghosts at His Highness’s back. Would Rodrigue have been able to bear it, living in a world in which he raised two smiling little boys to send them off to die?

Can he even bear it now, with Felix sick and shivering, with no promise that he will ever recover fully?

“Lord Fraldarius?” a hesitant voice comes from the door.

Rodrigue turns his head just enough to pick up blonde hair and a tight expression in his periphery, and he gusts out a sigh. “Ingrid… please,” he whispers, unable to tolerate the ache of another relationship strained to breaking. “Glenn may be gone, but you are still like a daughter to me. Call me Rodrigue, as you used to.”

“Rodrigue,” Ingrid relents. There’s a moment longer of silence before she tiptoes into the room, as if the mere sound of her footsteps will disturb Felix and Sylvain’s rest. With the grace and lightness of a bird alighting, she perches on the edge of the chair beside Rodrigue at Felix’s bedside. “I…” Her voice is shredded, raw, like she’s been crying and still hasn’t quite managed to stop. “I must apologize, for my previous behavior.”

It takes Rodrigue quite a few seconds to parse her meaning, and when he realizes she’s speaking about hitting him all those long weeks ago, his shoulders shake with humorless laughter. “Which of my sons taught you how to punch like that?” he asks her wryly.

Ingrid huffs out an indulgent laugh. “Felix and I were so much smaller than everyone else. We had to learn to be scrappy.”

Rodrigue remembers – Sylvain and Glenn used to tower above their younger friends. Sylvain was always gentle, always careful not to use his size to hurt or to frighten, in a way that was unsettlingly aware for his age. Glenn had no such compunctions and would gleefully torment his tinier companions, perhaps aware that they’d most likely overtake him in height someday and wanting to wreak havoc while he still could.

“You had an impressive bite,” Rodrigue sighs. “You and Felix both.”

“Teeth sharper than a Srengi windstorm,” Ingrid says. It’s what Glenn used to say whenever Ingrid bit him, or stripped kindle with her teeth. He’d said it so fondly. Rodrigue’s stomach twists with the old loss.

“And almost as sharp as Felix’s tongue.” Rodrigue stares at Felix’s pale, cracked lips and wishes desperately to hear Felix’s voice again, no matter how cruel the things he says.

“He’s too stubborn to let this break him,” Ingrid says. She hesitates before she adds, “They both are.” There’s a heavy undercurrent of emotion in her voice, and Rodrigue’s gaze slides over to Sylvain in the bed beside Felix’s. The boy his son promised to die beside.

They almost kept that promise. Rodrigue dreads to think of what would have happened, had only one returned alive.

Rodrigue’s heart feels like a rock sinking into a dark gulf of water. First Lambert and Glenn, then his country and his Prince, and now his youngest child. Even the things that have returned to him have returned to him broken. Some days, his grief is enough to send him to his knees. Everything he’s done, he’s done for Faerghus. Everything he’s lost, he’s lost for Faerghus. For King, for country.

But to see his children lose everything is a weight even he may be unable to bear.

“Ingrid…” Rodrigue whispers. He runs his fingers across Felix’s bandaged hand, afraid to squeeze too tightly. “I… I am sorry that this is the world we have left for our children.”

It’s a hollow apology, but Ingrid still takes his hand when he starts to cry.

* * *

A war council meeting just let out, so there’s more people than usual in Sylvain and Felix’s room just by virtue of more people being in the building. The meeting itself wasn’t very productive; it’s been weeks of a stalemate, none of the three nations willing to be the first to start a conflict. The Kingdom’s position on the Great Bridge is strong, though they still haven’t received a response to their missives to the Riegan Dukedom. The Empire’s army is holed up in Fort Merceus, daring the Kingdom or the Alliance to make a move. The monastery has fended off some Imperial assaults, but nothing serious – mere reminders from the Empire that they will not be ignored forever.

Annette frowns at the floor, scuffing her boot against a knot in the wood. She doesn’t like this tension and indecisiveness, especially when it’s so unlike both Dimitri and the Professor to hesitate. It’s no longer a given that they’ll be taking the field at Gronder, and silently she hopes that this means they’ll turn their sights to Fhirdiad instead. Thinking of her mother in the Faerghus Dukedom, in danger every day…

But— Sylvain and Felix. People keep turning to look at their empty chairs in the war room, like either of them will be sitting there to give an opinion. Annette’s even caught Dimitri glancing that way on occasion, which is strange both because he’s attending the meetings at all and because he actually cares what other people have to say in them. 

It’s a good change. A great change! But—but—Annette chews on her lip. Nothing seems to make sense anymore. Nothing about her life is under her control, and she wishes there were something she could do. All this waiting, all this hoping – she’s _tired_ of it.

“Wow,” a voice comes from one of the beds, and Annette jerks her head up. “I didn’t expect this many people,” a labored breath, “to show up at my funeral.”

Sylvain has his eyes open, and he looks like he’s trying to smile.

“Sylvain!” someone says – Annette thinks maybe Ashe – as the Blue Lions collectively swarm the bed.

“Where are… all the flowers?” Sylvain asks as Mercedes leans down to press a hand to his forehead.

“Your fever’s broken,” Mercedes says with a genuine, if tired, smile. 

“Not the only thing… that’s broken,” Sylvain replies, and Annette wants to smack him for being so cavalier about the condition he’s in. He still looks about two steps away from death’s door, though, so she settles for pouting at him.

“Syl _vain,”_ she says, in her best imitation of the way Felix says it. Whether or not it’s close, it works, and Sylvain blinks and slowly turns his head to look at her.

“Annie,” he responds, still trying to smile.

“How are you feeling?” Mercedes asks Sylvain calmly, interrupting the stare-off before Annette can inevitably lose because her eyes are filling with tears.

“Peachy,” Sylvain says as breezily as he can when he sounds like his throat’s been rubbed down with sandpaper.

“You do not have to lie to us,” Dedue says, gently chiding, as he picks up the glass of water on the bedside table. Because it’s nearly impossible to willingly continue disappointing Dedue, this is what makes Sylvain’s mask crack and drop.

Sylvain takes a small sip of water when Dedue raises the glass to his lips, and when he swallows and speaks, his voice has none of the false cheer from before. “I… I feel horrible.” His eyes keep flickering to the bed beside his own, like he has to keep reminding himself that Felix is still there. “Can you… help me sit up?”

It’s not Dedue but Dimitri who swoops in to ease Sylvain into a sitting position. It’s smooth and effortless – Annette sometimes forgets how much strength hides in Dimitri’s wiry limbs – but it still makes Sylvain wince and choke on a noise of pain.

“Here, let me,” Ashe says, his arms full of extra pillows from the room’s tiny storage closet, and he ducks under Dedue’s still-outstretched arm to tuck the pillows behind Sylvain’s back. It’s a little comical to have so many people crowded around a tiny infirmary bed, but Sylvain’s face—he seems. Uncomfortable? Anxious?

Scared.

“Give him some space,” Annette says firmly, ushering Ashe and Dedue backwards and nudging Ingrid’s leg with her foot. She glances over her shoulder as she urges everyone away, and she’s relieved to see some of the tension leaving Sylvain’s tired face.

She doesn’t know what happened to Sylvain. To either of them. But the stories their bodies tell are unfathomably violent, and she can’t imagine Sylvain being completely surrounded when he can barely sit up is comforting.

Dimitri and Mercedes are the only two left beside him, the rest of the Blue Lions banished to the perimeter of the room. Annette can’t hear what Dimitri is saying, but he’s holding Sylvain’s hand with impossible tenderness and the smile that touches Sylvain’s face is genuine this time.

Sylvain doesn’t stay awake for long, and no one leaves until he drifts back off. Dimitri is still there when Annette tears herself away.

* * *

Sylvain and Felix are in the same bed again.

Ashe purses his lips and glances over at the healer on duty – Marianne, this time. She makes a helpless gesture.

Ever since their fevers broke and their bodies strengthened enough to sit up and move around a little, it has been an _ordeal_ to keep them in separate beds. The only healer who can manage it consistently is Mercedes; Linhardt isn’t inclined to prevent it as long as they don’t hurt themselves, and Marianne is too soft to say no. 

Ashe has witnessed the journey from one bed to the next before and it is frankly _heartbreaking,_ because neither Sylvain nor Felix has quite managed to relearn walking but will not let the indignity of crawling across the floor prevent them from being with the other. The Prince enables this behavior by carrying them, but on the increasingly frequent occasions he’s attending to his duties, Sylvain and Felix make do.

“What,” Felix says imperiously from the bed.

“This can’t be healthy,” Ashe says with a sigh as he moves to the chair between the beds. He turns it to face the occupied bed – Sylvain’s, this time, if Ashe’s memory serves – and sits.

“Don’t care.” Felix tucks his face into the bony hollow of Sylvain’s shoulder and neck.

“Don’t care,” Sylvain agrees, pressing his cheek to Felix’s hair.

It’s – understandable, really, even if it isn’t healthy. For two months, all they _had_ was each other. It’s why Ashe isn’t willing to fight them too hard on it, even if it’s probably slowing their healing both physically and emotionally. 

“Did you bring food?” Felix asks, eyeing the basket Ashe is holding in his lap. He and Sylvain have put on a significant amount of weight, though they still look like a strong breeze could blow them over; nonetheless, Dedue and Mercedes have determined it’s healthiest to restrict them to several small meals throughout the day until their bodies are more used to eating regularly. Ashe suspects they squirrel food away when no one is looking. It’s what he did for months when he came to live with Lonato. But it’s a comfort to them, and he’s unwilling to deprive them of a crutch this early in their recovery.

Ashe opens the basket. “Yes,” he answers Felix. It’s nothing exciting – plain rice balls filled with chicken – but no one’s willing to test what Felix and Sylvain are capable of digesting yet. Felix and Sylvain both sit up, eyes fixed hungrily on the food in the basket, and Ashe’s heart aches.

Sylvain, closest to Ashe, reaches into the basket and plucks a rice ball out to hand to Felix. Though Felix accepts it, he refuses to bite into it until Sylvain has one too; it’s a habit whose origin Ashe doesn’t like to think about.

“Slowly,” he reminds them when they start to eat. They send him twin looks of mutiny, but they’ve made themselves sick by eating too fast often enough that they heed Ashe’s advice without much fuss.

“Did you make these?” Sylvain asks around a mouthful of food.

“Dedue and I did.” Ashe fiddles with the corner of the cloth he’d wrapped around the rice balls to transport them. “He… he says you’re recovering admirably.”

There’s movement beneath the blankets as one of them kicks a foot. “If by _admirably_ you mean _still unable to walk,”_ Felix mutters. He glares at his rice ball like it’s the reason he’s still stuck in bed. “I hate this.”

“Your bodies suffered a lot,” Ashe tells him gently. “Be patient with them. They’re working hard to heal.”

“I can hold a pen again,” Sylvain offers. “I signed a letter. That’s exciting.”

“Not that your bastard father bothered to write you back personally,” Felix says, murder in his voice.

Ashe winces. Sylvain had signed the letter Byleth sent to the Margrave, and Byleth had read the Margrave’s response in a war council meeting, their face dropping more with every word. _It is a relief to hear our family’s line will be preserved. I hope my son will not be too much of a burden on your resources._ He included no note to Sylvain and no indication that he planned to visit his injured son.

“Hey, he’s busy with the war effort,” Sylvain says. It sounds more like it’s out of habit than an actual desire to defend his father. Felix huffs, polishing off his rice ball and lowering himself back down to curl against Sylvain’s side.

Their physical closeness is – a little overwhelming to watch, actually. Faerghus is a culture of respect and distance. Even families rarely hug. The effusive physicality of the Adrestians and even the folks from Leicester is still something that catches Ashe off-guard, even now, so to see his fellow Faerghans – noble Faerghans, no less – so unashamed about touching one another is an… adjustment.

“You’re staring,” Felix grouses.

“I-I’m sorry.” Ashe glances away self-consciously.

When Sylvain finishes his own rice ball, he wraps an arm around Felix’s narrow shoulders and settles back against the pillows more comfortably. “Might not be normal, but it’s a tough habit to break,” he says raising his Felix-free shoulder in half a shrug.

“No, I-I’m not judging you or anything!” Ashe says quickly, jerking his head up. “None of us can even begin to imagine what you went through. If it makes you feel more comfortable—”

“It does,” Felix says, somewhat snappishly.

Ashe puts his hands up in surrender. “I brought a book?” he says, hoping to appease them.

Sylvain makes an approving noise. “Is it one of the racy ones?” he asks, wiggling his eyebrows.

Rolling his eyes, Ashe plucks the book from the bottom of the basket. “Yes, it is,” he responds. “It’s a comedy.”

“Ugh,” Felix puts in.

“A racy comedy,” Ashe stresses. “It’s funny and romantic. You’ll like it, I promise!”

“Not like I can do much even if I don’t,” Felix mutters, but his narrowed eyes are glittering with amusement.

“You have to do the voices,” Sylvain says. He flings one of his arms over his head, splaying himself against the pillow like a swooning maiden. “Felix and I are poor, helpless invalids, and you’re our only hope for entertainment. Make it good.” He grins at Ashe, and Ashe can’t help but smile back – less because Sylvain is actually being funny and more because that smile is getting stronger and healthier every time Ashe sees it. Sylvain and Felix both still look like they spent a few unfortunate weeks stumbling through brambles on the Faerghus tundra, but there’s so much more color in their skin and life in their faces.

“Fine,” Ashe sniffs, feigning indignance as he opens the book. He’s not the best at voices and Sylvain mercilessly makes fun of his fake accents, but when Mercedes comes to help with their individual check-ups, both Sylvain and Felix are smiling.

* * *

Sylvain is restless, as he always in when Felix isn’t in the room with him. It breaks Mercedes’s heart to see him so obviously distressed, but encouraging their codependence is only going to hurt them both more in the end. They were in the same bed _again,_ and while Mercedes doesn’t want to deprive them of whatever comfort they can find, they aren’t always going to be able to be in the same room as each other.

“He’s just down the hall,” Mercedes says soothingly as she unwinds the bandages from Sylvain’s torso. Sylvain, mutinously facing the wall as he sits on his bed, doesn’t respond. “He’ll be back as soon as Marianne is finished checking on him.”

Sylvain grunts, which Mercedes graciously takes as an affirmative.

“Ashe was reading you a story, wasn’t he?” she hums as she runs her fingers across the bumps of his ribs. His wounds are healing nicely, and she’s pleased to see visible improvement in his weight. “It sounded like an exciting one.”

“Yeah,” Sylvain mutters.

“I know you’re not happy about this,” Mercedes tells him. “But you can’t be together all the time.”

Sylvain is silent.

Mercedes sighs as she rubs salve on his wounds. She’s clearly not going to make progress with him today, and she does the rest of her work in silence, only speaking when she needs to ask him how this or that feels when she touches or moves it. Overall, he’s healing about as well as Mercedes can expect; he’s regained an impressive amount of mobility in his fingers, and he’s starting to put a little muscle back on.

There’s a tap on the doorframe, and Mercedes turns her head to see Ingrid. “I’m just finishing up,” Mercedes says. “You can come in. I’ll be out of your hair in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.”

“Manuela told me he’s alright without a healer as long as someone’s with him,” Ingrid says, sounding uncertain about it. “But are… are you sure?” She glances at Sylvain.

Mercedes hums. “I know he still doesn’t look his best,” she says, patting the last bandage after she secures it around Sylvain’s shoulder. “But he’s perfectly stable, now. He just needs someone to make sure he doesn’t push himself.”

“I’m right here,” Sylvain says, still sounding a little sour.

“Yes, yes,” Mercedes tells him indulgently. “I’ll leave him to you,” shes says to Ingrid, gathering her supplies and standing. She offers Sylvain a comforting smile when he glances at her, reassuring him that she isn’t angry; she knows better than to take personal offense to Sylvain’s misdirected emotions. Ingrid nods at her, and she leaves the room.

* * *

Being separated from Felix still isn’t getting any easier, no matter how many times Byleth and Mercedes insist it will. Sylvain huffs an irritated breath through his nose, continually glancing at the door like Felix will come walking back in. He hates it – hates feeling like something bad is going to happen to Felix if he isn’t there to protect him.

_Not that you did a good job of protecting him anyway._

Sylvain scowls down at his lap. In the end, all his presence had done was cause Felix more pain. There aren’t many ways Felix could have been forced to… do what he had to do, with Pell. Sylvain _knows_ Pell leveraged Sylvain against Felix. Sylvain had promised himself, so many times over so many years, that he would give his life to protect the people he loves, especially Felix, and Felix still—

Well. Sylvain would have been worth more if he had died protecting Felix, rather than lived to be used against him. Even now, all he’s doing is causing other people pain. _Sylvain can’t walk, Sylvain’s so skinny, it breaks my heart_ – all this grief, all this suffering, all because he couldn’t do his damn job properly.

“What are you thinking about?” Ingrid asks him quietly, interrupting his thoughts.

Shaking his head, Sylvain plasters on a smile. “Nothing important, as usual,” he tells her cheerfully.

She glowers at him, at once irritated and sad. “Come on, Sylvain,” she says tiredly. “You’re still pretending to be fine, even now?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Sylvain says, leaning back against his pillow and staring at the ceiling. Ingrid makes a noise of frustration beside him, and he closes his eyes.

“Look,” Ingrid says haltingly. “I—I’m here if you want to talk, okay? I’m not going to judge you. Nothing that happened was your fault.”

 _But it was._ He should have noticed something was wrong with Pavel. Should have realized he was leading Felix into an ambush. Should have protected Felix better, should have, should have…

“Sylvain,” Ingrid continues, pained. “I know that you’re suffering. I don’t—I don’t know how to help, and I’m sorry.” She sniffles. “I’m just—I’m so glad you’re alive. I’m so glad both of you are alive. But I hate watching you suffer, and I hate that you won’t let me help.”

Sylvain opens his eyes again and turns his head to look at her, and his heart sinks when he sees that she’s crying. _This is all you’re good for. Making them hurt. Making them cry._ “Hey, it’s okay,” he tries to tell her, reaching out a hand and placing it on her knee. She grips it in both of her own, and Sylvain continues. “I’ll be good as new in no time. They already have me on solid foods. If I’m good, they might even let me try to walk.” He cracks a grin, trying to make her laugh.

It doesn’t work. Ingrid makes a frustrated noise. “You’re doing it again,” she accuses. “You’re acting like how I’m feeling is more important than—” She makes an aborted gesture with one of her hands. “Than everything that—happened to you,” she finishes, somewhat weakly, unable to give it voice.

“Aw, Ingrid,” he says, voice wobbling, trying valiantly to keep his grin in place. “You don’t need to worry about me.”

“That’s exactly why I worry!” she snaps. “Because you actually believe that!”

Sylvain opens his mouth, but he comes up empty-handed when he grasps for a response. The depth of feeling in her voice, the tears glittering in her narrowed eyes – he feels wrongfooted, stumbling through an emotional landscape that’s completely foreign to him.

“You think I want you to keep pretending you’re okay?” Ingrid’s voice cracks. “You think that’ll make me happy?”

 _Yes,_ Sylvain thinks helplessly. They all want him to be fine, but putting on a show for them just makes them more upset. Would they rather he just—fall to pieces? Give in and break down? Scream into his pillow, throw a tantrum about how _unfair_ it all is? “Ingrid,” he says, but nothing else manages to come out of his mouth.

Ingrid shakes her head. “I love you,” she says, her voice trembling. “I don’t say it enough. I love you, Sylvain. You’re important to me, and I love you.”

“You…” His mouth opens and closes. “I…”

Ingrid’s laugh is weak and wet. “If I could love you like a wife would love you, I’d marry you,” she says. “I’d take you away from your father. You—you could be a Galatea. We’d have a hundred little children, and not a single one would have a Crest.”

And for a moment, Sylvain imagines it. Being married to Ingrid – it wouldn’t be so bad. Both their families would be satisfied by the arrangement. Biological heirs wouldn’t be an issue. They love each other as friends, which is more than a lot of Faerghus couples get. But—

He doesn’t love her like he loves Felix, like he loves Dimitri. And she doesn’t love men at all.

“It would have been simpler, wouldn’t it,” he says, bittersweet.

“People like us don’t get simple, I’m afraid.” Ingrid’s grip on his hand has loosened to something friendlier, less agitated, and she rubs her thumb in a circle across his knuckles. 

She wants to help. She loves him. Sylvain might not understand what about him she thinks is worthy of loving, but he can at least give her the gift of a bit of vulnerability in return.

“Hey, Ingrid?” he says, pushing himself up on his elbows. “Can—can you maybe help me cut my hair?” He hasn’t seen himself in the mirror since… well, since before he and Felix were taken. But he knows he must look a sight, his hair untrimmed and what little facial hair he can grow unshaved.

“O-oh—yes! Yes, of course I can,” Ingrid says, perking up immediately. “Just give me a moment to get some supplies.” She vanishes from the room, presumably to raid Manuela’s office for personal care items, and she returns holding scissors, a razor, and a small hand mirror. She hands the mirror to Sylvain, and as she sets her tools on the bedside table, he picks the mirror up to look at himself for the first time in months.

Miklan stares back.

Sylvain drops the mirror. His hands fly to his hair, hanging around his face in long, shaggy chunks. His fingers dig into the strands as the image that he saw in the mirror bangs against the inside of his skull – Miklan, wild-eyed and dangerous, a man unable to love, _undeserving_ of love—

“Sylvain!” Ingrid’s voice cuts through as if from underwater, and Sylvain realizes his breathing has become erratic and rapid. It’s not a very lucid realization, more of an observation he’s making from outside his body, and his eyes flicker again to the mirror.

It’s still face-up on the bed, and he catches a glimpse of red hair and a golden eye.

He lets out a hysterical sob. Two months of torture, and this is what breaks him.

“Sylvain, what’s wrong?” he thinks he hear Ingrid ask. The mirror glints at him. _You deserved everything you got,_ Miklan says. _Useless, ungrateful brat. Felix would have been better off if you were still rotting in that hole._

Sylvain roars and flings the mirror off the bed. Despite his body’s weakness, it hits the floor with enough force to shatter, and Ingrid yelps.

With the mirror breaks his composure, and Sylvain _howls,_ wrenching at his hair. What the fuck is his life good for—what is _he_ good for—if Felix still screams himself awake at night, Dimitri still snaps at ghosts no one else can hear, Ingrid is _crying,_ and Sylvain’s alive and _made all that happen?_

“Sylvain, please,” someone begs.

 _Sylvain, please,_ Felix begs, blood and come dripping down his face, streaked through with tears. _Sylvain, please,_ Dimitri begs, thirteen and trembling, surrounded by his family’s corpses. _Sylvain, please._ He folds his knees to his chest and buries his face against them, unable to bear the overwhelming rush of pain. Miklan was right. Miklan should have killed him. His ghost must have slipped into Sylvain’s lungs when Sylvain took that first, shuddering breath in a world where his brother couldn’t hurt him anymore, and now he’s becoming the same kind of monster Miklan was.

Someone’s hand touches his shoulder, and every muscle in his back seizes.

“Please, Sylvain, you have to breathe!”

His lungs burn and his face is hot and wet with tears. The world has folded itself into a tiny, oppressive bubble around him, and he curls up more tightly under the pressure. Two _months_ he and Felix suffered, two months of burnt feet and knives in his ribs and shattered fingers, two months of watching the light in Felix’s eyes die more and more, and for what? For _what?_

The hand on his shoulder tightens almost to the point of pain. “Breathe in,” the voice begs him. “Just breathe with me. Breathe!” It follows with an exaggerated inhale.

Sylvain opens his mouth, and—breathes.

The world crashes back in around him as air fills his lungs in a wobbly, wet gasp. 

“There,” Ingrid says, desperately relieved. “There you go. That’s really good, Sylvain.”

 _All I’m doing is breathing,_ he wants to snap, but maybe—

Maybe that’s all she _wants_ him to do. Not just now, but before. Not laugh. Not pretend to be okay. Just—just breathe. Just be. Just for awhile.

He exhales, and draws another breath in, steadier this time. The hand on his shoulder has moved to rub circles on his back. The panic doesn’t leave him right away, but with every breath it dies down further, like a candle burning the last of a wick. When he lifts his head, he’s surprised to see it’s not just Ingrid in the room anymore.

At the door stands Rodrigue, tension still visibly draining from his body.

“My apologies,” Rodrigue says, rubbing the back of his neck. “I was in the war room looking over some papers, and I heard a shout.”

“Everything is fine,” Ingrid says with more conviction than her body language implies. “We’re fine. Right, Sylvain?”

“About as fine as I can be when I’m the reason all this shit happened in the first place,” Sylvain mutters. It’s a sharp bitterness he doesn’t mean to voice, but his heart feels flayed open and raw, like his pain is leaking out with every beat and he’s helpless to stop it.

“Sylvain,” Ingrid says, her hand freezing on his back. “You… you can’t believe that.”

He snorts, bitter and humorless. “What, it wasn’t _my_ officer that betrayed us? It wasn’t _my_ safety they leveraged to hurt Felix?”

“None of that was your fault!” Ingrid protests.

Sylvain shrugs noncommittally, resting his elbows on his knees and refusing to look at her. He expects her to make more noise about how wrong he is, how she knows better than he does what he should feel, but she—

She wraps her arms around him.

It’s an awkward position, with his knees to his chest and her holding him from the side, but she clings to him tight and buries her face against his shoulder. “Please,” she begs him quietly. “Even if you have to blame yourself, don’t—don’t—”

“Don’t?” he asks her.

Her fingers flex in the fabric of his shirt. “Don’t act like it would be better if you had died,” she says, voice breaking with tears.

“I—” Caught, Sylvain finds himself without words. He grips his knees, unable to bring himself to return her embrace. She pulls back from him, tears smeared across her cheeks, and opens her mouth as if to speak again; before she does, though, she glances at Rodrigue and lowers her head.

“Ingrid,” Rodrigue says gently. “Could you give us a moment in private, please?”

Ingrid glances between Sylvain and Rodrigue, troubled, but she nods shallowly. Picking her way around the broken glass, she makes her way out of the room, still wiping tears from her face. The door clicks shut behind her, and Rodrigue breathes out a long sigh as the room falls into silence.

“Sylvain,” he says gently.

“You should hate me,” Sylvain hisses. “I’m the reason Felix got hurt. I’m the reason your son almost died.”

“I know that’s not true, even if you don’t.” Rodrigue settles into the chair Ingrid vacated, leaning backwards to give Sylvain space. Like this, he looks – tired, hunched at an infirmary bedside without his mantle and his finery.

Sylvain huffs and lowers himself back down onto the bed, his muscles screaming in relief when he finally relaxes onto the mattress.

“I may not know exactly how you feel,” Rodrigue says. “But I… I am intimately familiar with the pain of failure.”

The Tragedy. King Lambert. Rodrigue home with his family, only hearing that he failed his life’s greatest purpose days after it happened. Sylvain’s heart twinges and thinks that Rodrigue might understand more than anyone the pain he’s in.

“I felt worthless,” Rodrigue continues, lowering his eyes. “Lambert was dead. The one person I’d sworn to give my life to protect, gone while I still lived. To keep living felt like the greatest betrayal I could commit.”

“How?” Sylvain whispers. “How do you keep living?”

Rodrigue leans forward. He places a hand on Sylvain’s chest, right above his sternum. “Do you feel that, Sylvain?”

“Feel… what?”

“Your heart.” Rodrigue taps his fingers against Sylvain’s breastbone. “It’s still beating for a reason. You survived for a reason.” He tilts his head, gaze boring into Sylvain’s. “What reason, Sylvain? For what is your heart still beating?”

When Rodrigue removes his hand, Sylvain replaces it tentatively with his own. Below the bumps of his ribcage, his heart thuds against his fingers.

“Whatever that reason is,” Rodrigue says quietly, “it is far more important than your shame.”

Sylvain flattens his palm against his chest and pushes. The pressure causes him some pain, but he feels it more strongly now – his heart pushing back.

 _You’re the reason Felix suffered,_ his shame tells him. _You couldn’t protect him. You can’t protect anyone. You should have died in that hole. You should have died in that well._

His heart beats against his palm, strong, alive.

 _What reason?_ it asks him with every beat. _What reason?_

He thinks of the raw relief on Felix’s face whenever he wakes to see Sylvain looking back. The way Ingrid held him, her fingers clenched in his shirt, her face wet with tears. The way Dimitri can sleep through entire nights now, sometimes, without waking wild-eyed and screaming.

 _What reason?_ his heartbeat asks, and he thinks of Dedue’s gentle hands feeding him soup, wiping the mess away with his thumb when Sylvain struggles to swallow. The way Mercedes prays when she thinks Sylvain is sleeping, muttering thanks over and over for bringing them both back to her. The smiles returning to Annette and Ashe’s faces, slowly, brighter and brighter each day Sylvain and Felix improve.

Would they still smile like that, if Sylvain had died? Would Dimitri sleep through the night? Would Felix still want to wake up, if it meant he was waking up alone?

 _What reason?_ his heartbeat asks, and he answers, _Even if not for myself, then for them._

* * *

Felix hates individual check-ups.

He understands at least logically what the healers are trying to do. It isn’t as though he and Sylvain can attach themselves to one another by the hip; they need to learn how to exist independently of each other, and having their medical exams done separately is a small step in that direction. It doesn’t mean Felix likes it.

Marianne is quiet, at least, as she checks over his injuries. She murmurs questions sometimes – _is this hurting you? How is your range of movement here? Is this wound feeling any better?_ – but she doesn’t try to talk to him about his feelings or any of that nonsense, and Felix is selfishly grateful.

He’s only somewhat surprised when Byleth slips into the room about halfway through the exam. The Professor has been too busy to spend much time with either Felix or Sylvain, but they appear now and then between war meetings and visits with dignitaries. They stand silently against the wall as they wait for the exam to finish, and it speaks to how used to their nature everyone is that neither Felix nor Marianne is at all uncomfortable with their staring.

“I’ll let you two talk,” Marianne says softly when she ties the last bandage. She nods at Byleth when she passes them on her way out the door, and Felix narrows his eyes when Byleth nudges the door shut behind them.

“You’re going to try to talk to me about it,” he says flatly.

“You haven’t spoken to anyone but Sylvain about it,” Byleth responds, just as flat. They drag a chair over from the corner of the room and seat themselves beside Felix’s temporary bed.

“No one except Sylvain _needs_ to know about it,” Felix snaps. “We were tortured for two months. We got out. End of story.”

“No one expects either of you to be okay.” Byleth tilts their head, expression soft and open. “Dimitri’s spoken about it, now and then. Nothing specific,” they add when Felix’s eyes narrow. “Just that you were under the care of some very unpleasant men.”

Felix snorts derisively. _“Unpleasant.”_

“He mentioned the name Pell.”

Felix freezes.

Even just _hearing_ the name is enough to make his blood run cold, and he hates how weak it makes him feel. On the rare occasions he speaks to Sylvain or Dimitri about the things that happened, he never uses Pell’s name – Turner’s and Dorset’s and Brionne’s and Pavel’s taste bitter on his tongue, but he doesn’t choke on them the way he does Pell’s. _Him. That man. The one who took my finger. The one who took my—_

Well. Hearing it spoken aloud is like being doused by cold water.

“He hurt you,” Byleth says softly. “Worse than the others did. Isn’t that right?”

“I don’t—” _know what you mean,_ Felix tries to say, but the words catch in his throat.

“Felix. We all want to help you.”

“You don’t know what he made me do,” Felix snarls, fists clenching in the bedspread. Byleth stares back, ever impassive, ever impartial, and something in Felix’s chest _snaps._ There’s no way Byleth would be so calm and accepting if they knew the truth, and Felix hauls himself into a sitting position despite the jolt of pain in his torso.

“Felix,” Byleth says softly, but Felix ignores them.

“He told me to suck him off,” Felix hisses. “And I _listened._ I put my mouth on him. When he told me to make it good, I used my tongue and let him fuck my throat.”

Byleth stares at him. There’s no shock in their expression. No disgust. Just gentle, sad understanding.

“I could have bitten him!” Felix punches the mattress. “I could have—I could have stopped him somehow! But I just—I just let him—”

“He would have hurt you worse if you refused,” Byleth tells him quietly. “Or Sylvain.”

“He came all over my face,” Felix says, near hysteria. He thinks there are tears in his eyes, but he’s too frantic to tell. “He—he pulled out and jerked himself off and he just—all over my face, some of it got in my _eyes—”_ He’s definitely crying now, helpless tears that he swipes away with angry fingers. “He—he asked me. He asked me. ‘What do you say?’”

“You don’t have to tell me this.” Byleth’s voice is gentle.

“I—I said ‘thank you.’” Felix barks a raw, humorless laugh. “He used me like a whore, and I _thanked_ him for it. And he fucking—he said—” His voice cracks in half, and he buries his face in his hands. _He said, ‘good boy,’_ are the words that refuse to leave his throat, no matter how much he tries to force them. “Fuck. Saints. I’ve been hurt so much worse before. Why can’t I get _over_ this?!”

“Just because it didn’t hurt you physically doesn’t mean it didn’t hurt at all,” Byleth tells him. Felix peeks through his fingers, and there’s still nothing on Byleth’s face but tender understanding. No judgment. No disgust. The lack of it makes Felix’s chest feel hollow somehow, like the reality he’s been living is one completely different from theirs. 

“They took my hair. They took my _finger.”_ The sob catches in Felix’s throat. He drops his hands to his lap and hangs his head. “And somehow, _this_ is the worst thing they took from me.”

“You are allowed to grieve for yourself,” Byleth says softly. “What happened to you was inhuman.”

Felix lets out a derisive, humorless snort. “More inhuman than torture?”

“More than that.” Byleth studies him, their inscrutable gaze warm like the watchful eye of a caring god. “Torture for information – it’s a transaction. An inhuman one, yes. But it is understandable.” They pluck at the pills on Felix’s blanket, though they don’t break his gaze. “What they did to you was an act of cruelty and power, for the sake of cruelty and power. It was… senseless.” They finally lower their head, and Felix is struck by the sudden, lurching thought – Byleth was a mercenary, with a body many would think was a woman’s.

“You…” Felix’s words dry up in his mouth.

“He took something from you,” Byleth says. “Allow yourself to grieve for it.”

Grief isn’t something his family gives themselves the luxury of. If you have time to grieve, you have time to train – time to prepare your body for combat, time to exact revenge on the source of your grief. Or whatever’s closest to it. His father only ever indulged his tears when he was small. _A true knight does not show his pain to anyone anywhere but the battlefield._

But this isn’t a battlefield, and Felix can barely walk, let alone train or fight. Grief is all he has left.

His shoulders tremble. He bunches the blankets up into his hands. Byleth’s hand alights on his shoulder, and they move to rub soothing circles on his back when he doesn’t protest the touch. Felix shakes as he cries in earnest, and Byleth doesn’t say anything at all as he lets himself begin to grieve.

* * *

Apologizing to his friends and classmates is one of the hardest things Dimitri has ever done.

He’s suffered countless heartaches and indignities, but flaying himself open before the people he loves to accept whatever judgment they choose to render for his sins – he doesn’t think he’s ever been quite so terrified. But the burden of the injustices he’s exacted on the people he claims to love far outweighed the terror of prostrating himself, or the protests of his ghosts.

 _We march for Fhirdiad,_ he’d told them, and the relief and joy on their faces filled his heart with more conviction than ten years of a hollow quest for vengeance ever did. But there are still two people he needs to tell.

His Sylvain, his Felix. Two of the most precious people in the world to him, safe and alive, there for Dimitri to touch and hold and protect. Because he ignored his ghosts and followed what his heart told him was right. Because he turned from vengeance to protection – preserving what he loves instead of destroying what he hates. His ghosts are not silent, but reminding himself of that conviction quiets them when they begin to scream.

When he enters their room in the infirmary, they’re in bed together. His heart thumps when he sees them tangled together, murmuring softly into the small space between their faces, all red and black, all his. Safe, alive. Linhardt is dozing over a book in the corner, and he offers Dimitri a lazy wave before returning to the pages.

“Hey, Your Highness,” Sylvain says from the bed, sitting up slightly.

“Boar,” Felix greets, though with none of his usual vitriol.

“My friends,” Dimitri says. He seats himself on the end of their bed. “I… I would like to first apologize to you.”

“For what?” Sylvain asks with a snort. “Saving our lives?”

“For endangering them in the first place.” Dimitri stares at his hands, unable to meet their questioning eyes. “Had I turned my gaze to Fhirdiad sooner…”

“Sooner?” Felix interrupts, ever-sharp.

“We… we are no longer planning to march for Gronder. We are taking back the capital instead,” Dimitri says. “My quest for vengeance blinded me to what is most important to me. My homeland, my people…” He hesitates, lifting his head and flickering his gaze between the two of them. “You.”

“You can’t possibly believe what happened was your fault,” Sylvain says. “I mean, yeah, you made some _really_ questionable decisions. I’m not going to lie to you.”

Dimitri winces. From beneath the blankets, a foot nudges him.

“Hey,” Sylvain presses. “What I was gonna say is, you made a lot of bad decisions, but no one could have prevented what happened. Some militant anti-Kingdom assholes hired a bunch of sellswords and took out the easiest targets.” He shrugs, a pained smile on his face. “That was us. If you’re gonna blame yourself, you have to blame me too.”

Lifting his head to stare at Sylvain, Dimitri opens his mouth to protest.

“It’s true! The guy who betrayed us was _my_ general, Dimitri.” Sylvain’s use of Dimitri’s name makes Dimitri close his mouth immediately. “If you were somehow responsible for not seeing the future, so was I.”

“Besides,” Felix says, leveling Dimitri with an intense stare. “You… you came back for us.”

“Of course,” Dimitri says softly. “I could not… I cannot bear to lose anyone else. I am only sorry it took me this long to realize it.”

“But you realized it,” Sylvain says, just as quiet. His face softens into something genuinely fond. “I… I’m really proud of you.”

Dimitri’s eye stings with sudden tears. “You need not be proud of me for doing what I should have done from the beginning,” he whispers.

“Shut up,” Felix scoffs. “You always do this. Just take the compliment, Dimitri.”

Hearing his name on Felix’s tongue is enough to make the tears in his eye spill over. He wipes them away with absent fingers as he regards Sylvain and Felix.

“I will take back Fhirdiad,” he swears to them. “I will claim my crown and my throne, and I will return to you.”

Sylvain’s smile turns playful. “Not gonna bring us the Emperor’s head as a gift?” he teases. Dimitri flushes.

“When does the army leave?” Felix asks.

“At least a week,” Dimitri tells him. “The Professor and Rodrigue are discussing it more thoroughly, but I…” His face is hot, and he can’t bear to meet their eyes any longer not from shame but from embarrassment. “I needed to tell you right away.”

“Aw,” Sylvain says, but his voice is tender.

Felix takes a breath as if to speak, and Dimitri glances at him from the corner of his eye. His face is troubled.

“We’ll be staying here, won’t we,” Felix says. It’s phrased as a question, but based on the way he says it, he already knows the answer.

“Yes. You are not yet strong enough to fight.” Dimitri moves his eyes across their forms – their cheeks still somewhat hollow from hunger, their muscles wiry and weak. His heart breaks for them. They’re warriors of Faerghus through and through, and he knows that it has to be killing them to be so helpless. But he will not risk their lives for some useless ideal like honor or pride.

Felix scoffs and turns his head away.

“We understand,” Sylvain says, somewhat sharply. There’s a shuffle of movement in the space between their bodies like Sylvain is nudging Felix. “We’ll be here when you get back.”

“Right,” Felix mutters. He glances back at Dimitri, and some of the tension in his expression fades. “I… I’m glad,” he says haltingly. “I’m glad you’re…” He trails off, face reddening. “Just. Fight well. Come back safely.”

“I will,” Dimitri promises.

* * *

The army leaves for Fhirdiad in three days.

Felix takes a steadying breath as he leans against the door to the training grounds. It’s late enough and the march close enough that the pitch is empty. He’s not supposed to be here – he’s on strict orders to only exercise with supervision – but he can’t—he needs to _try._ He can’t let Dimitri and the others leave without him. He has to prove that he can still fight, that he’s strong enough to come with them, to _protect_ them.

There are training weapons on the wall across the pitch. Felix takes a step onto the sand, but the moment he leaves the support of the door, his legs wobble, as unsteady and uncertain as a fawn. Scowling, Felix retreats to the door and resigns himself to skirting the wall to reach his destination.

Making it to the pitch from the infirmary took more out of him than he’d like to admit. Sylvain was dead asleep when he left, and Felix tucked a pillow under his arm in hopes that even if Sylvain blinked awake, he’d be unaware enough to mistake the object against his body as Felix. There’s a momentary twist of guilt in the pit of Felix’s stomach, but this—this is something he has to do.

Though he wants to try one of the dulled metal blades, his arms are weak and trembling just from supporting himself along the wall; he frowns and selects a light wooden practice blade instead. Its weight in his hand is distressingly uncomfortable and unfamiliar, but he wraps his right hand’s four remaining fingers around it and staggers out onto the pitch.

It becomes quickly apparent that losing even his smallest finger has an enormous impact.

He moves into his first practice form, but the blade tumbles out of his hand on the first swipe. His hand is weak and aching, unable to grip the hilt properly without the support of his pinky. Hissing through his teeth, he eases himself down to retrieve the blade.

The second and third attempts go much the same. Even when he moves his thumb down the hilt to add support where his pinky used to be, the blade’s weight slides from his grip whenever he tries to swing it. He has his nondominant left hand, but his skill with his left doesn’t compare at all to his skill with his right.

Or. It didn’t.

Panic sets his heart thudding against his ribcage. He can’t even _hold his sword._ The child of the Shield of Faerghus, future right hand to the King, a feared general who learned to hold a sword before he learned to hold a pen, dropping his blade like a child too weak to hold a weapon yet.

“Felix,” someone calls from across the pitch.

He jerks his head up and whirls around. This alone is enough to dislodge the sword from his grip, and it thuds into the sand by his feet.

His father stares back at him from across the grounds.

Shame burns through Felix, hot and overwhelming. How long had he been watching? How much did he see? How ashamed must he be, seeing his only son struggling to even keep a weapon in his hands?

“Old man,” Felix says, voice thin and reedy.

Rodrigue approaches him. Whatever emotion is on his face, Felix doesn’t recognize it.

“Sylvain was beside himself,” Rodrigue says, glancing between Felix and the sword in the sand. “I told him I knew where you were.”

“And did you?” Felix asks bitterly.

Something sad pulls down the corners of Rodrigue’s lips. “I did,” he says. “I may not know you as well as I used to, but you are still my son, Felix.”

Felix snorts, hanging his head. “You still see me as your son after this pitiful display?”

“Your body needs to heal before you push it this way,” Rodrigue continues. “The best thing you can do for yourself and your friends is listen to what the healers tell you.”

Felix’s body screams at him when he crouches to pick up his sword, and he hopes the sheer amount of pain he’s in doesn’t show on his face. “The best thing I can do,” he says stiffly, “is hurry up and become useful to them again.”

The blade trembles as he struggles to regain his feet, even though he’s gripping it in both his hands this time. When he lifts his head, the unreadable emotion is back on Rodrigue’s face, stronger this time; the lines on his face are deep and tired.

“Felix, I…” Rodrigue purses his lips. “I understand how you’re feeling.”

“You don’t understand _anything,”_ Felix hisses. He shifts his aching body into a ready position, feet braced shoulders-width apart, the hilt of the sword squeezed between his shaking, sweating palms.

Rodrigue only watches him, sadly, inscrutably, and Felix roars and takes a swing at him. The sword tumbles from his hands in a shallow arc.

“What use am I,” Felix gasps through tears, clenching his fists as he stares at the blade on the ground. “What use am I if I can’t—”

“Felix,” Rodrigue whispers, sad, inscrutable.

Felix tangles his fists in his hair, yanking and pacing, his breaths sobbing, heaving things that make his shoulders shake. “They took— _everything_ from me,” he forces out. “My body, my dignity—” 

“Felix, you’re going to hurt yourself—”

“And now they’ve taken this, too!” Felix barks a wet, violent laugh as he gives the sword on the pitch a violent kick. It tumbles across the sand and lies still. “A weapon that can’t fight! A sword that can’t cut! What use am I to the Kingdom now?!”

 _“Felix!”_ his father snaps.

Even at twenty-two, hearing that tone in his father’s voice makes Felix freeze.

“You’re more than your use to your Kingdom, Felix,” Rodrigue says. _Pleads._ He’s vulnerable in a way Felix has never seen so openly, and—

That emotion on his face, in his voice – he’s _heartbroken._

“Father,” Felix says weakly.

Rodrigue closes the distance between them, and Felix doesn’t have time to react before his father is yanking him into a hug. “I was wrong,” he whispers into Felix’s hair, voice tight with pain. “Your life, or the Kingdom… I… Felix, I—I cannot lose another son. I cannot lose you.”

Uncertain, wrongfooted, Felix lifts his hands to touch his father’s back. He’s not quite hugging Rodrigue back yet, but he’s not rejecting the embrace, either.

“I cannot lose you,” Rodrigue repeats. He tucks Felix’s head against his shoulder, and Felix lets him, pressing his face against the fur lining of his father’s cloak. “You are not the Kingdom’s sword or shield. You are not a weapon.” His voice catches, and Felix realizes with faint shock that his father is _crying._ “You are my son. You’re all I have left.”

Felix wraps his arms more firmly around his father, fingers tightening against the fabric of his cloak. He could push him away. He could scream, and cry, and demand to know why it took him almost dying for his father to realize that he loves Felix more than he loves his country.

But he’s so tired.

He’s tired, and weak, and small, and some part of him has been desperate for his father to hold him like this ever since Glenn died.

So he clings to his father, and he lets himself be held.

* * *

Today, the army departs, and Sylvain and Felix aren’t going with them. The preparations have been going on all week, but it still feels surreal to stand in the courtyard and bid farewell like some kind of war bride begging her husband to return home safely.

Not everyone is going. Some people need to stay to protect the monastery and tend to the wounded; many of the former Black Eagles and Golden Deer aren’t marching. But the entire Blue Lions class is leaving to take back their homeland. The entire class except Sylvain and Felix.

It makes sense. Sylvain _knows_ it makes sense. Their bodies are barely capable of walking, let alone fighting; they’d be liabilities, unable to protect themselves and making the entire army worry for their safety. It still makes him scowl as his old classmates surround him and Felix for goodbyes and well-wishes.

“We’ll be back!” Annette promises, bouncing up on her toes to press a kiss to Sylvain’s cheek. His scowl twitches. It’s very difficult to stay angry when Annette is trying to cheer him up.

“We can’t lose,” Ashe swears, holding both of Felix’s hands beside Sylvain. “Not when we know we have to come back to the both of you.”

“Overconfidence will get you killed,” Felix chides him, but his face is scrunched up with what Sylvain knows is repressed worry.

“Don’t worry,” Mercedes says peacefully. She pats Felix’s cheek, then Sylvain’s. “I’ll look after them.”

“Look after yourself, too,” Sylvain tells her as he draws her into a quick hug.

Dedue and Ingrid are next, each murmuring promises of success and a safe return. Wryly, Sylvain thinks he should have brought favors to tie on everyone’s weapons.

Dimitri is the last to approach him. He’s wearing his new armor – Blaiddyd silver and blue, resplendent and regal – but the look on his face is uncertain and young. “Sylvain,” he murmurs as he stops in front of the two of them. “Felix.”

“Boar,” Felix says, but he hesitates and adds, “Dimitri.”

Something in Dimitri’s face softens at that. “I will return to you both,” he says. He takes Sylvain’s hand in one of his own, and Felix’s in the other. “I swear it to you. With the two of you to protect, my lance will know nothing of defeat.”

Sylvain grips Dimitri’s hand.

“Before I go,” Dimitri says. “I feel I must…”

“You must?” Sylvain prompts him when he trails off.

Dimitri opens his mouth, but he closes it again with a shake of his head. “It will be easier to show you,” he murmurs, and Sylvain’s heart leaps when Dimitri leans in and presses a kiss to his lips.

It’s long and lingering, but it’s chaste. It takes a moment for Sylvain to overcome his shock enough to kiss Dimitri back, but when he does, he feels his Prince smile against his mouth.

Before he can deepen the kiss, Dimitri pulls back to kiss Felix, too. Sylvain grins as he watches the flush spread across Felix’s cheeks, and he laces his fingers with Felix’s.

“I love you both,” Dimitri murmurs in the space between his lips and Felix’s. Sylvain can hear the rest of the Lions whispering, but he’s beyond caring – all that matters is both his hands in Dimitri’s and Felix’s.

“You’ll come back to us,” Sylvain says, and he finds he believes it, with all his heart.

“I am leaving you as a Prince,” Dimitri tells them, squeezing both their hands, “and I will come back to you a King.”

“Idiot,” Felix mutters, standing up on his toes to press a kiss to the corner of Dimitri’s mouth. “As long as you come back to us alive, the rest doesn’t matter.”

* * *

It’s been a week since the army left. Sylvain and Felix are slowly losing their minds.

They’re physically capable of walking around on their own most days, but their conditions still exempt them from most of the work around the monastery. No cooking, no cleaning, no training – nothing. Even Sylvain, who claims he could use the break anyway, is growing visibly restless. To say nothing of Felix, who is just about ready to climb the walls if it means an end to the boredom.

Their friends do their best. Bernadetta has snuck Blackie, Felix’s favorite monastery cat, into the infirmary several times now. Leonie enlists them for light labor now and then, letting them clean and oil the spare weaponry. Dorothea has been trying to teach them both how to sing. But everyone is busy, and the fact of the matter is that Sylvain and Felix are still stuck inside the infirmary for the foreseeable future with no one for company but each other and the occasional medic.

It gives Felix altogether too much time to think, especially about the kiss Dimitri gave him. And the kiss he gave Sylvain. And the kiss Felix shared with Sylvain after the army left, a desperate meeting of their lips in their room as the flags of the Kingdom Army vanished over the horizon.

It also gives Sylvain too much time to think, which results in certain discussions that Felix never expected to have. Like this one.

“You know what you could do,” Sylvain says as he turns Felix’s hand over in his grip.

“What,” Felix says flatly when Sylvain doesn’t continue, just keeps running his fingers across Felix’s skin.

“Hear me out.” Sylvain slides his thumb across the edge of Felix’s palm, just below the stump of his pinky. “If you put your hand _right_ up against your nose, it would look like you shoved your whole pinky up there.”

“What— _Sylvain,”_ Felix splutters, pulling his hand back. “That’s disgusting!”

Sylvain wheezes out a laugh, patting his hand on Felix’s knee excitedly like a child asking for attention. “Wait, wait, no! You’re not _actually_ shoving your finger up there! Just—think about it! Think how horrified people would be if they didn’t know!”

“Stop it.” Felix bats at Sylvain’s hand, but he can’t suppress the smile blooming on his face. Absurd, that he can still find amusement in things like this. “There’s no way anyone would fall for that.”

“The next Duke Fraldarius,” Sylvain continues as if Felix hadn’t spoken. “Makes direct eye contact with Gilbert Pronislav and shoves his entire finger up his nose in protest.”

The laugh bursts out of Felix before he can even think to stop it. The kiss he presses to Sylvain’s mouth to shut him up when he laughs at Felix’s undignified snort is a more calculated maneuver.

* * *

A few more weeks pass. There is little news until the capital is taken properly, and when that news comes, the entire monastery breathes a sigh of relief.

* * *

With news of the campaign’s success comes a more troubling message: His Majesty King Dimitri vanished shortly after the city was taken, just after he was publicly coronated. He took a single horse and slipped past his guard; even Dedue was left behind.

“He did something stupid,” Felix mutters, pacing the infirmary room. “He said he’d come back to us, but he didn’t say _when.”_

“It’s not like him to look for loopholes like that,” Sylvain says, uncertain. His leg bounces nervously as he sits on his bed. 

“He probably got it in his head that he needs to defeat the Empire entirely in order to be _worthy_ to return to us,” Felix snaps. “That boar never understood the meaning of _moderation.”_

“You’re one to talk,” Sylvain mutters. 

Felix flushes, remembering how Rodrigue had to practically carry him back to their room when he’d gone out to train that night. But still, he can’t shake the worry. Dimitri has improved enormously, but he’s still… troubled. Felix can see him convincing himself that the Emperor needs to die before he can allow himself to return to the men he loves.

He’s sat in this monastery, waiting for news like a war bride, for long enough. If Dimitri has vanished, then Felix is going to look for him.

“We’re going to the stables,” he says.

Sylvain lifts his head, eyebrow raised. “We’re going to look for him?” he asks. 

“Yes.” Felix fumbles his boots on, fingers less clumsy than they were but still struggling to tie his laces. “We just got him back. We’re not losing him to his—his damn _ghosts_ again.”

Sylvain kneels to help Felix with his boots. “You’re right,” he murmurs as he tugs his own shoes on. They ready themselves in silence, and thankfully, they’re well enough at this point that everyone seems to assume that they’re just enjoying the fresh air when they slip out of the infirmary and cross the monastery grounds.

They make it all the way to the stables before they get caught.

“I believe,” a strong voice comes from the entrance to the stables, “that neither of you have been cleared to ride.”

Felix whirls around from where he’s adjusting the saddle on his horse. In the dying light of the evening, a familiar figure stands silhouetted in the door.

“Your Highness,” Sylvain breathes.

A wry chuckle as Dimitri enters the stables properly. “I suppose it’s Your Majesty now,” he says, “but to you, I will always be Dimitri.”

Felix stumbles in his haste to reach Dimitri halfway across the stables, and both Dimitri and Sylvain steady him as they crash together in a tangled, three-way hug.

“Stupid,” Felix hisses from where his cheek is pressed against Dimitri’s chest. His nose tickles with the road dust covering Dimitri, but he only presses himself closer and tightens his grip on both Dimitri and Sylvain. “We thought—we heard you—”

“One of your generals sent a letter,” Sylvain mumbles, a little muffled. Felix can’t see from where he’s enfolded between their two large bodies, but it sounds like Sylvain has his face tucked into Dimitri’s neck. “They said you vanished just after the coronation.”

“You thought I…” Dimitri’s voice cracks with hurt, and Felix balls up a fist and ineffectually hits his chest.

“We knew you would come back to us,” he snaps. “That wasn’t it.”

“We thought you would—I don’t know,” Sylvain huffs a laugh that’s equal parts exasperated and relieved. “Try to bring us back the Emperor’s head as some kind of—of— _courtship offering,_ or something.”

“Nothing is more important to me than returning to you,” Dimitri says, pulling both of them closer, his hand landing on Felix’s head and burying itself in his hair. “Not the Empire, not the crown. This—this is all I want now, do you understand?” Felix feels Dimitri’s grip tighten, just enough to be possessive. “With the capital recovered, I could think of nothing but coming back to you.”

“Sap,” Sylvain says, his voice thick with emotion.

“You impulsive fool,” Felix tries to chastise, but it falls flat when his voice cracks. Because the truth is—there’s nothing Felix wants more than this, too. Here, tucked against Dimitri’s chest with Sylvain pressed against his side – here, safe and protected, Dimitri’s arms around him and Sylvain alive beside him – there’s nothing that matters more to him than this. This embrace, these people.

“I will never leave you again,” Dimitri murmurs into the warm space between the three of them, and Felix knows he doesn’t just mean physically.

“Or let anyone take us again,” Sylvain says, in a tone that was perhaps meant to be a joke but sounds more like a plea.

Dimitri pulls back enough that Felix can look up and see both his and Sylvain’s faces. The kiss Dimitri presses to Sylvain’s lips is gentle, and the one he gives Felix next is too.

“Never again,” Dimitri promises, and both Felix and Sylvain believe him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> EDIT: the amazing and talented lilly @saccharinesylph drew some INCREDIBLY TENDER AND WONDERFUL ART for this chapter and i doubt i will ever stop crying about it please go look [here](https://twitter.com/saccharinesylph/status/1270055790255247360?s=21) and leave some love!!!
> 
> general content warnings for this chapter include graphic descriptions of injuries and starvation
> 
> the dimitri pov beginning with "Though Mercedes dosed Sylvain and Felix with a strong painkiller..." contains descriptions of vivid hallucinations, including his ghosts speaking to him
> 
> the scene in which dedue is feeding sylvain soup with ingrid present has references to racism, and dedue and ingrid discuss her prejudices a little. ingrid is unlearning her racism, and has all the best intentions to continue doing so.
> 
> the sylvain pov section beginning "Being separated from Felix still isn’t getting any easier..." contains explicit self-loathing language and suicidal ideation. when he sees his reflection in a mirror later in the scene, he has a panic attack in which he imagines miklan berating him and saying he should have died. sylvain also blames himself for his and felix's capture and torture. he ultimately moves past these thoughts.
> 
> in the felix pov scene beginning "Felix hates individual check-ups," felix discusses his sexual assault with byleth. he explicitly describes his assault and couches it in victim-blaming terminology; he speaks about the assault as if it was his fault, which byleth tries to convince him is not true.


End file.
